


Outside Deep Ellum

by ljs



Series: the Deep Ellum stories [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:36:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Written in 2005.)</p><p>Set in Season Seven, this fic goes (very) AU after "Selfless" (and after AtS Season Two and the episode "Dead End"). It was in part inspired by an LJ friend who opined that Anya's Sunnydale story ends after that episode. Well, then! Giles, shell-shocked and wounded, is on a quest for the Prokaryote stone; he finds much, much more than he expected. The fic also contains a supporting turn by an AtS character.</p><p>Acknowledgements: Blind Willie Johnson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Night, dark and quiet, and Giles is alone in a furnished studio flat in Sunnydale. He’s told Buffy and the Scoobies that he doesn’t want to over-burden the Summers house, already crammed with Potentials and Andrew and a potentially murderous souled vampire with a trigger, but that’s not it. He can’t stand the bloody noise. It might collapse the shell he’s carefully constructed around himself: the Watcher to end all Watchers, quite literally.

This will be the end indeed, he thinks, and he pours himself another whisky. Golden liquid trickles over ice.

The First has appeared to him, of course – as Randall; Ethan; Jenny; his grandmother who loved him and wanted him to be better than he was. Better than he is, he corrects himself. Takes another drink. But the First hasn’t reached him. Takes more than those ghosts to break him.

The golden liquid could melt the ice, so he drinks more quickly.

An odd thing. His only Sunnydale break has been when he realized that the studio he’s chosen had been Anya’s – she had held onto it even while engaged, and stayed there after Xander wounded her, until she offered D’Hoffryn herself in recompense for blood. Silly beautiful girl, he thinks sadly, fondly, somewhere inside his shell. She should know that anything once spilled, even blood, is like melted ice: no matter if it re-freezes and becomes ice again, it’s not the same.

He’s rather glad she left Sunnydale after she became human again. He fears his shell would shatter under her high voice and her higher heels, her honesty and awkward care. However, he has kept the furniture as she left it, and in the night-depths, he sometimes lies in her bed and dreams of warmth and tart sweetness and amnesia kisses.

Silently he drinks, while in front of him he spreads out the weekly newsletter from the Society of Magic Shops. He’s held onto his subscription; he doesn’t know why it offers sweet, sharp-toothed slivers of comfort. But now he has another purpose for it. He flips to the classifieds, looking for an answer to his own advertisement.

He’s searching for a Prokaryote stone. Spike, trigger always ready to be pulled, chains gone except the ones which Buffy holds – he’s the First’s creature there in the Summers basement, and no one seems to care. Giles has tried to talk to both Spike and Buffy, but they don’t listen. His voice doesn’t seem to carry outside his shell. Perhaps if he offers a specific solution, a chance for Spike to choose....

Silently he drinks. He doesn’t need a Prokaryote stone to let loose the memories and the damage, Jenny’s body in his bed, Angelus laughing while Giles batters him with wood and fire. Buffy didn’t listen then, either.

The answer is there on the page. A. E. (no name given), Dallas, Texas, can put him in touch with a private collector of mystical artifacts; there’s a phone number, an address, a request for contact. "Let’s make a deal," the advert ends, and he finds his mouth curving in what’s not quite a smile.

When he gets to Dallas the next day – blue sky fading into dark as he’s flown east – it’s bitter cold. The worst weather comes at the end of winter, the hire car agent says as she gives him directions to the address he has.

Lights hurting his eyes, he drives the freeways like he’s spinning down a river. The riverbed here is all concrete, without water. The water’s underground.

The address is in a renovated warehouse and retail district: one of those reclamation efforts, industrial space made into tiny shops full of uselessness and art, clubs spilling over with the well-dressed and the would-be cool, light where there was darkness. Unused railroad tracks cut through the streets like streams from the dead river. Here at the end of winter, everyone is wrapped up.

He parks, walks a block to the address. It’s a small magic shop called Magic Places – closed now for the night but still bright, beaming light into darkness. The window display of candles and magic-filled jars on gold cloth is familiar; he knows that artist’s hand, he’s sure he does. But he’s too deep inside himself to remember. The damage keeps him inside

A passerby, a local by his clothes and accent, hails him. "Looking for _her_?" the man says. He points across the street to a club. Its neon lights deliberately evoke the past, two martini glasses limned in the black window; a throb of music reaches Giles from across the street. "She’s probably in there. It’s her night, you know."

Giles thanks him and then crosses to the door. The heat pulls him in before he knows it – even though it’s early still, he’s swallowed up by illegal smoke, perfume and alcohol, by anguished blues over a cold, driving beat. On a small parquet floor a woman glitters in gold as she dances. She’s dancing for herself, heedless of those watching her. Her sinuous hips and graceful hands and closed eyes draw Giles closer. Much closer. Too close.

Then she opens her eyes and sees him, what must look like a dark frozen shape at the edge of the light. The shock makes him catch his breath, but Anya smiles. "Hey, Giles! I’ve been waiting for you. Ready to make a deal?"

...................................................

As Shanice the DJ turns up the music in the club, blues over beats that are very good to dance to, Giles winces. This is a familiar Giles-thing. He’s also drinking bourbon remarkably fast, which is not.

In one of the few, prized booths in Blind Willie’s – she has managed to dislodge Yuppie Steve and Old-Timer Eddie with merely a smile and a slight shake of her breasts – Anya swirls the ice in her vodka tonic and stares at her other prize. Okay. His hair is a little greyer, his already pronounced worry lines a great deal deeper on that ruggedly handsome face, and his smile is non-existent. This is not what she hoped for when she saw his advertisement in the newsletter last week.

Not that she had _hoped_ for anything, she tells herself. But when she’d seen the terse, precisely worded ad and its R. Giles signature, she’d had an intense pang of missing Sunnydale -- no, not Sunnydale, but him and their shop. Instead of sitting in her own little store here at the edge of Deep Ellum, for a long moment she’d felt herself in the Magic Box again, swimming in the scents of money and dried herbs and magic and old books, drinking the Darjeeling he’d made and watching him clean his glasses, his hand rubbing through linen in a neat, tidy circle.

His thumb moves on his cut-glass tumbler in a neat, tidy circle, spreading around the condensation from the melting ice in his glass, and she smiles. She’s missed him, she thinks again, and now she can help him. She wants to help him. But still –

"You really didn’t know it was going to be me?" she prompts again.

Not a smile, but almost. "You didn’t use your name in the advertisement, Anya, or even initials I’d be able to identify," he points out, before he takes another drink. He closes his eyes when the liquor hits his tongue, tilts his head back to let the good stuff slip down.

She’s staring, she realizes, and he’s said something... "Oh. Well, I’ve been experimenting with names, and there are safety issues, and actually you didn’t use your whole name either."

"I used enough so that you knew to expect me," he says, and then turns the tumbler around in his hand. His eyes still seem to be closed, but that might be a trick of the shadows. Then they open, the sharp Watcher behind his glass wall. "Why didn’t you let me know who you were?"

She recognizes the several layers to this question, feels the knife-edge of them like she felt Buffy’s sword in her chest that horrible night. Unconsciously she rubs at the gold silk-satin material that covers her scar – D’Hoffryn left her the mark when he changed her back to human this time, no doubt for vengeance-reasons – as she says, taking the most literal meaning, "I didn’t really know if you’d be happy to see me. You haven’t exactly been a good correspondent since.... you know."

"No." He finishes the drink, then pushes the glass away as if it hurts him. Slowly: "I’m sorry for that, Anya. I’ve been... I’m just sorry."

It’s like she can feel him turn the knife-edge against himself, which she finds unacceptable. She puts her hand out to cover his cold one, drape herself over masculine bone and muscle. "It’s okay, Giles. I had to deal with everything myself. Find out who I was."

"I’m still sorry," he says, his voice so soft she can barely hear him.

She plunges into memory like breaking through ice – back in their Magic Box, and he’s smiling at her, saying that very thing in a voice filled with such love that she wants to wrap him up with her in linen so they’d be together always, in some dim quiet place where he could say more things like that to her.... She doesn’t realize how hard she’s gripping his hand until he tries to pull it away, at which point she feels heat rush up her body, her throat, her face. "Oops," she says, and she lets him slip away. Slip away again, and that’s her second mistake, her stupid mind finishes.

He does slide his hand out of her grasp, of course. Picking up a soggy club napkin as if he’s searching for anything at all to distract him, he says, "So this club is named Blind Willie’s? There was a blues artist named Blind Willie Johnson–"

"Yes. It’s a tribute – the owner knew him well, and Blind Willie played here. Not here, precisely, but in Deep Ellum proper."

"What’s Deep Ellum?" he says, almost smiling.

"The name of the neighbourhood. Years ago it was where the outsiders lived – people of different colours than the rest of Dallas, and, well, others who might not have been people. Now it’s a thriving small-business area where much money is exchanged. A good place for a magic shop, even if I’m not quite within the boundaries." When he does smile at that, she says, "What?"

"Nothing." He drops the napkin and the smile, and then says, "Shall we do that deal, Anya?"

"Deal...Oh, yes! That’s why you’re here!" She says this with great enthusiasm, as if to convince herself that she doesn’t mind he wouldn’t ever look for her, just her. "Actually, let me go just set up your meeting with the Blind One."

"The Blind One?"

"Yes, the current holder of the Prokaryote stone you want. Also, the owner of this club, and the controlling interest in the shop which I co-own and manage." When he raises his eyebrows, she clarifies, "Magic Places. Anyway, back before you know it."

As she goes across the now crowded dance floor, she throws a look back at their booth. He’s almost hidden in the corner, but she can see the flash of his glasses and the gleam of his hand reaching toward his empty tumbler. He needs a refill, she thinks –

And then Drunk Delia spins her around before Michael, who sculpts tiny misshapen animals and somehow sells them from his gallery three doors down, catches her, saying, "Hey there, Anya-girl, why aren’t you dancin’? It’s your night, you know?"

"I’ve got something better to do, just for tonight," she says, but pats his arm. She likes Michael. On Wednesday nights – which is her night off, before her three late-opening nights when the streets are full of people with money – she comes to Blind Willie’s and dances. Michael often gets a drink and sits there watching, smiling at her while she twirls for hours, dipping and swaying and immersing herself in the pour of music.

He misses his lover Jerry who died a few years ago from a stupid human disease, he told her one night, and he thinks she dances like his man did. She considers this a compliment.

Shanice shouts across the turntables, "Hey girl, you want me to play your song? You ain’t dancing, you know."

"In a minute!" Anya calls back, and then pushes the rest of the way to the bar. Esteban is tending bar tonight – very attractive man with excellent muscle tone, although she doesn’t find herself interested in him sexually. Which is odd. One more glance back at the booth, at glasses and long fingers on an empty tumbler and hidden warmth, before she says, "Esteban, I need another vodka tonic and another Booker’s, make this one neat. And I need an appointment with the Blind One."

"That’s your Giles, then?" he says, already reaching for the bourbon with one hand and the special house phone with the other.

"Not mine." She makes herself sound cheerful. "Just Giles."

"Ah, _chica_ , did you not see the way he looks at you? Who’s the blind one here?" he says. Before she can answer, he turns around to conduct his business conversation and make their drinks. The sounds of glass on glass and the spill of liquid mingle with whatever Shanice is playing, and she looks back again.

For a second it’s like Giles is gone, disappeared into shadow or England or the depths of his overcoat, and she’s caught by terror, but then he comes back into focus. He didn’t really go anywhere, she tells herself.

And then the drinks she’s ordered slide across the bar, and Esteban leans over to say, "He can’t tonight. It’s one of his bad ones, I’m afraid. But he says he will see your Giles tomorrow evening."

"But that’s a late-opening night!" she says, breath catching in another kind of terror. Then, resolutely: "I guess I can close early just this once."

"You have to come with the man to hold his hand?" Esteban laughs, pushes the drinks closer. "No, _chica_ , he’s not your Giles. No, not at all."

"No, he’s not. He’s just Giles," she says again. Her words sound cold and unhappy even to her own ears, which depressive moment she decides to ignore. She gives Esteban the money and a good tip, collects their drinks, and starts back across the dance floor. The minute her foot touches the parquet, Shanice waves at her and then spins into a re-mixed song Anya loves.

As a husky male voice sings about crazy rivers and trains, about heat and sudden passionate connection, Anya carries their drinks back to Giles. When he sees her, he leans forward out of the dark of the booth.

And she smiles. At least she’s got him for one night.


	2. Chapter 2

Giles doesn’t know if it’s reprieve or punishment, this enforced twenty-four-hour period of waiting for the thing he needs. Hand curled around his second glass of bourbon – he wonders idly if he should eat something to offset the liquid warmth curling through his chest, he hasn’t had anything since breakfast – he looks across the booth at her. "You’re sure this, er, Blind One can be trusted?"

"Oh, yes. The Blind One is a force for good, Giles. He’s a specialist in, well, _justice_." Her skin and her smile glow in the diffuse light from the lamp which hangs over the table – gold, all gold like the warmth in his chest. When she leans forward, however, her top falls open over her breasts. He’s so caught by the gleam of her curves that it takes him a second to see a thick broken line of marred skin under the silk–

She pulls the top closed with a quick, almost nervous moment, her smile dimming. He tries to ignore his swell of sexual interest and concomitant guilt, and says hastily, "Right. How is this Blind One ‘justice’?"

"It’s connected to his gift, and I don’t mean his talent for making money. He was the vendor for the line of worry-stones I sold at the Magic Box. After you left, you know." She pauses, nibbling her lip. "However, he’s half-demon. Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don’t see why it would be."

Her smile comes back, twice as bright. "Great! Anyway, he’ll be fair, especially because you have a good reason... well, I don’t really know why you need the Prokaryote stone. Who’s got to have their brain picked?"

"Not ‘brain picked,’ Anya – it’s deep memory-release, as you very well know. And it’s for Spike."

When she frowns, he explains about the First Evil – "so very full of itself," she announces, in a voice of sharp disdain – and the dead left in triggered Spike’s wake, the danger Spike still poses. Frowning deeper, she says, "You mean Buffy hasn’t done her Slayer job and told him to get the mind-bomb taken care of?"

He doesn’t really know how to answer that, how to contain his own disappointment and anger and failure, but he permits himself a quiet "Neither Buffy nor Spike has seemed willing to deal with the problem."

"I see. So like always, you have to." Her hand covers his again. The light pressure of her fingers is like the weight of a dainty stiletto heel digging into far too thin ice; he can feel the cracks streaking out in every direction, feel the underground river trying to rise. He can’t let that happen, has to get her away from him before she falls –

But before he can pull away, someone is standing at the other end of their booth. Light change, pressure change: even as Anya turns to smile, her hand grows heavy on his. "Hi, Michael," she says. "What’s wrong?"

Giles can see at a glance that the man is lost; he blinks at the other man’s wounded eyes and a coat wrapped too tightly around himself, at the strange reflection from shadow. When the man smiles, however, the sense of doubling dissolves. "I know you’re busy, girl –" he turns the smile on Giles, nodding – "but I was wondering if, maybe just this one song, you might favour me with a dance."

"Michael, really, I _am_ busy."

"Please?" The man’s voice is low, almost begging, and Giles feels an edge of broken-ice anger. If the tosser sees that Anya’s busy, why the bloody hell is he bothering her?

But the thought is swallowed by guilt and reflective sympathy. "Anya, if this is your night, or ... I don’t mind if you do." He shifts his weight, with his free hand bringing his own coat closer to his body. He feels the chance for escape like a change in the air. "If you’ll excuse me, I should be leaving anyway–"

Her handclasp tightens. "No. No, you can’t leave yet, Giles." Echo in the midst of music, blues over a cold heartbeat, reflection from shadow: she smiles at him, and he’s lost. "Please?"

He can’t smile back, he can’t. But he says, "All right, dance if you like. I’ll wait."

"Fine – hey, Giles, you want to dance too?" she asks. At the dismay he can’t hide, she sighs. "Fine fine fine. You just sit there and be repressed for the length of this one song." As she gets up, her thin jacket slides off her shoulders, leaving her shoulders bare. She says firmly, "Yes, sit. Stay."

"Anya, I’m not a bloody dog–"

But she doesn’t hear him; she’s already striding, smoothly and with complete Anya-focus, toward the dance floor. The crowd seems to part for her, or maybe she’s just making her own way. She begins to dance even before she hits the shifting lights of blue green red gold, all gold; she spins like a leaf in a current, rides on top of the blues. She’s so annoyingly lovely, he thinks before reaching for his bourbon.

The wounded man’s still standing there, still waiting for something. When Giles looks up, the man says, "Thank you. Sometimes I need to see what I don’t have, you know? Weird way to cope, I guess."

"I’m sorry," Giles begins, an automatic response although he doesn’t know for what he’s apologizing or with what he’s sympathizing. The man’s already gone, however, melted into the crowd. In a minute Giles sees him, sitting in a chair on the edge of the parquet floor, watching Anya spin herself free with hips and hands and smile.

Silently he drinks. Yes, this is punishment, he decides, as she dances for herself, as out of reach as if he were still in Sunnydale.

When the song finishes – not that he’d call it a _song_ , he thinks with his own disdain– she tosses back her hair, pats the watching man on his back, and then strides back through the crowd toward Giles. She’s glowing with exertion, and when her hands push back her damp hair, her breasts lift underneath her gold silk. He blinks. Swallows hard. Sends up an intercession for patience, distance, Christ the way she looks isn’t helping –

"You ready to go?" she says, leaning over to get her jacket, and he’s hit with a wave of her, feminine sweat and freshly released perfume and Anya, a scent he remembers from the Magic Box and more from a dream-memory of her in his arms – "Giles! Are you paying attention to me?"

He mutters something banal before getting up from his seat, rather awkwardly. He’s aching, and it’s not just from days of travel and stress.

When they step outside, the cold strikes him hard. The evening sky is city-bright, but beyond the reflection of a million lights it’s heavy with grey clouds. Even as he and Anya reach the sidewalk, the first drops of freezing rain fall. "Oh, damn it, and I forgot my umbrella!" she says, seeming to hop up and down for warmth without actually leaving the ground. "Where’s your luggage? Do we have to go far?"

"What?"

"Your luggage." She pronounces each word with sweet impatience, a teacher burdened with a stupid child. "You’re staying with me, right?"

"I hadn’t...the inconvenience...er, I was thinking a hotel...." He suddenly despises the sound of his own voice and his bloody hesitations. "Thank you, Anya, but I’ll just find a hotel and come back to see you tomorrow."

"Why waste money and time like that? I have enough room for you," she says, and she reaches out to button his overcoat more securely against the cold.

Her touch is familiar from both memory and dream, and he closes his eyes against the lights, closes his ears against engine noise from the passing cars, feels the dangerous warmth even though it’s raining harder. The streets will be ice before morning comes, he thinks, before he opens his eyes again.

She pats his chest sharply. "So where’s your luggage?"

They walk the block to his car without speaking. The night is loud enough, however – snippets of song, bass and guitar and drum, wild laughter in counterpoint, spill out of the half-dozen clubs they pass. Most of the humans who’ve braved the weather tonight are smiling, or drunk, or both, and he thinks he sees a Sykos demon or two (humanoid, vaguely peaceful) lurking in the sheltered storefront of an art gallery.

Anya stays close to him. When she begins to shiver, he gives in to the call of duty and manners – or so he tells himself-- and puts his arm around her. Their steps match the rest of the way.

Weeks of travel have broken him of his old habit of over-packing; he has only a single piece of hand-luggage, easily enough retrieved. When he slams the car door, the sound echoes over loops of music and laughter, hollow in the freezing rain. Anya’s arm slides around his waist, and she says, "Say, have you eaten dinner?"

"Er, no."

Her face and body reveal her thinking as clearly as if a window’s been pushed open. "I don’t have much at home. We’ll stop in at The Arcadia and grab something to go – if you don’t mind bar food."

He has no objection, or none he can think of. She pulls him back the way they came, although they cross the street. Other side from Blind Willie’s, other side of the road – and two doors down from her magic shop, she nudges him into a half-open door, into more smoke and music.

The Arcadia is more of a dive than Blind Willie’s – flashing beer signs and the smell of hot grease, a long Western-style bar and beyond it a swinging door that apparently leads to a kitchen. Pool tables in the corner do a steady business, click-clack of balls hitting each other, but the swamp-hot blues filling the bar come from a man on a small, badly lit stage. When the voice and guitar ring out in pain, the crowd standing in front of the stage shuffles as if trying to escape, trying to get closer.

"Oh, I didn’t know Lindsey was playing tonight!" she says incomprehensibly, then beams at him. Melting ice-drops sparkle in her hair. "So is a burger okay with you, Giles? A beer too?"

His stomach pitches at the thought of more alcohol; he’s dizzy enough as it is. "Just water, I think."

"Fine. I’ve got fizzy _and_ still water back at my place. Burgers for two it is." She won’t take his money, however.

He feels the cold when she leaves him, but he doesn’t move. Hands shoved into his coat pockets, he listens to the man singing. It’s a Blind Willie Johnson song, as it happens, "Dark Was the Night." There are few words to the song – that much pain can’t be contained in words – and Giles forces himself to watch, to hear, to focus. The song raises ghosts far more potent than the First Evil.

When Anya returns with the bags of food and begins to move Giles toward the door, the man onstage brings the song to a close. Into the microphone he half-croons, "Thanks for stopping by, darlin’ Anya – and on your night, too."

She shakes her head, calls, "Don’t be a jerk, McDonald," before she pulls Giles outside.

He thinks he should ask what that was about. He thinks it’s none of his business. And he turns his face up to the sleet, lets himself feel the chill in the few steps it takes to reach Magic Places.

She lives above the store, it seems. They pass through a familiar shop-scape – he’d known he recognized her artist’s hand in the displays, reflections of their lost Magic Box everywhere – and then up narrow stairs and through a metal door to a loft space.

It’s laid out much like the space she abandoned in Sunnydale; again he feels a shock of recognition and of loss. But here in Deep Ellum her flat is brightly coloured and warm, with candles and soft throws and glass mobiles against the windows. Grey city light and flashes of neon are caught and intensified in their spinning panes.

She’s already stripping his overcoat off, and he has to drop his bag to let her finish the task. But she’s also following his gaze to the windows. "Those are sun-catchers, aren’t they pretty? Although of course they work better with actual sun. Also, I’m told it will be damn hot here in the summer, and I may not want to catch the sun then." Then she gives him a gentle shove in the small of his back. "I’ll get the food ready for us. You might want to take a quick shower – not that you don’t smell quite pleasant in a musky, masculine way, but you might wash off the travel-funk. Again, not that you smell _bad_ –"

"Thank you, Anya," he says on a choked-off laugh. He doesn’t know why her readiness to insult him pleases him so. However, she’s got a point, and he collects his bag and disappears into her painfully white bathroom.

Water, warm, getting hot. Clothes off; fresh sweatshirt and jeans located for after. He gets into the shower and lets the soap and water wash away the top layer of travel-dirt, exhaustion, and aches. He doesn’t allow himself to think of her moving around just beyond the door, because that way lies madness, lie more cracks in the ice. The ghosts are too close for him to risk that.

But when he goes back out in his clean clothes, hair wet because he forgot his blow-dryer, socked feet, he sees her arranging their food and drinks on a long wooden table in front of the sofa. Lamps are lit on the tables on either end, and she shines in their light, gold and smooth and focussed.

He doesn’t know if this is reprieve or punishment.

......................................

When Giles comes out of the bathroom, Anya almost drops the plates she’s holding.

Her body has been humming pleasantly from the moment she stepped off the dance floor – a low warm buzz emanating from her centre, ever since she pushed her hair back from her face and saw him watching her. It’s an alternating current of missed-him-so/with-me-now, absence/presence absence/presence, but when he walks out, she gets a power-surge. He’s Giles, damp silvering hair and worry lines and broad shoulders and long legs filling her apartment: _with-me-now with-me-now_. She feels like she’s dancing again.

But for some reason she also thinks of the Magic Box falling down around them, the solid structure falling apart with a series of cracks while he held onto her hand and breathed like every inhale and exhale hurt him. Tonight he’s been breathing like that again. He needs to see the Blind One for more than a stupid Prokaryote stone, she thinks, frowning even as she lets the current move through her.

He drops his bag on the floor, hesitates. "I’m sorry, did I take too long? Is there anything I can do to help?"

She sets the plates down on her coffee table. "No, you didn’t take too long. Now come and eat."

Despite her heightened awareness, their shared supper is easy. He sits in a modified masculine sprawl, as if his aches allow him this much freedom and no more, and chews his hamburger with every appearance of enjoyment. She curls up next to him, her knee touching his thigh, and eats her own food. They briefly discuss the phone call she got while he was in the shower – his appointment with the Blind One is set for nine pm tomorrow, which delay makes him a little testy – but that’s the only business they discuss. Otherwise they exchange conversational bites about current magic-shop practice and Sunnydale news – unfair taxation schemes and Dawn’s Sumerian studies, recurring vendor problems and the accessory concerns of apocalypse – but when they’re quiet, it’s good too. It’s just...easy. It’s Giles.

On the television a black-and-white movie flickers, the past on mute. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn make pretty shadows. As she swallows her last bite, she looks at the moving shadows, considering and measuring with her mind’s eye, and then she says, "Have you ever thought of wearing a fedora?"

He follows her gaze to the screen and smiles. Dryly: "This may surprise you, Anya, but the daily practice of wearing hats was just a bit before my time."

"Pity. It would be a very good look for you."

"Thank you... I think." He smiles at her again. Pretty shadows on and off the screen –

But she sees at the corner of his mouth a spot of red, ketchup or blood or something. "Hold still, you’ve got a smudge. Let me take care of that for you," she says, and after getting a napkin, she leans forward to wipe it off.

He freezes at her touch, doesn’t breathe, just waits as she works.

Perversely she takes her time removing the whatever – feeling the current inside intensify – and then tosses the stained napkin on her empty plate. "There. All clean, all trace of dead cow removed."

He looks down at the remains on his plate. "Amazing. With one simple, seemingly innocent remark you’ve made me a vegetarian," he says, but this time the sarcasm sounds false. The shadows on his face change with the new angle of lamplight.

Reaching out her hand, she says, "Giles–"

"Excuse me, I think I’m finished. Shall I clear all this away?" he says, pushing up from the couch, pushing away from her. Without waiting for an answer he collects her plate, stacks it under his, and walks into the tiny kitchen area.

She follows. The sleet hits the windows in hard little pings, and it’s darker here; only an under-counter light is still on, and the neon-flash spillover from the one large window she’s left uncurtained doesn’t quite reach. He’s retreating into dark again, she thinks, as he turns on the tap and then scrapes the plates under the running water.

He takes a long time, letting the water run in an unending stream, so she says, "No, don’t worry, I’ll get it." When she comes up behind him, though, he freezes again. Deliberately she reaches around him, presses her breasts against that wide back – her scar throbs for some reason, she remembers her own ghosts – and then takes the plates away to set them on the counter. He’s not breathing again. He needs oxygen.

"Pardon me, Anya," he murmurs, slipping out of her hold. But once more she follows him. He hesitates for a minute before he walks over to the uncurtained window. She watches him silhouetted against night, watches him touch the sun-catcher and send it spinning so that the lights from across the street play across his face, blue red gold, blue red gold.

"That’s the Blind One’s place," she says.

"Sorry?" he says over his shoulder.

"The Blind One lives across the street. Third floor, above Blind Willie’s." She comes to stand beside him. Because the flat and the windows are old, ice-driven wind curls under the sill and around the edges – it’s much too cold, she thinks, and she slips her arm around his waist to warm them both. The current strengthens, but she ignores the hum to point to the blinded windows on the building over the way, one floor up. "He owns most of this block, actually."

"Do you know, you’ve never told me the Blind One’s name."

"That’s because I don’t actually know it. It’s not important," she says impatiently. When he turns his head to look at her, he’s all reflection, glasses and glass capturing colour, and she moves closer to make sure he’s really there. Yes, _with-me-now_ , her body says as she presses against him despite his startle.

But he’s determined, she’ll give him that. "How can his name not be important?"

"Giles. Stop talking." She slips her hand down his stomach, past his belt and onto his jeans. She can feel warmth and substantial swelling hardness under denim even before she brushes directly against him, he’s going to fill her hand once she gets past the barriers–

And he mutters "Pardon me" again, but this time it means something different, and he’s already steps away from her. He’s breathing like it hurts him again.

"Let me take care of that for you, Giles," she says, vaguely aware that she’s repeating herself.

"Anya." Her name in his voice is familiar, so soft, and she can’t believe she’s done without it for so long. But he’s still retreating, trying to find a place she can’t see him. "I...can’t."

"It sure felt like you could. Impressively so."

"No, not that. It’s–" He draws a long breath, like he’s never going to breathe again. Never going to risk it. "Anya, I’m not safe."

"What does that mean?" She takes a step closer.

"I’m not right...what you deserve is someone...." He groans, a sound of utter frustration, but he doesn’t move. "I’m not doing very well these days. Please, Anya, don’t let me hurt you."

"You intend to hurt me?"

"No! Dear God, no. It’s just..." Smart-guy Giles, who can go on for hours and _hours_ about history and philosophy and competing methods of inventory, can’t seem to find any words, so he just stands there in shadow and looks at her. Every breath is like glass shattering all around him. She can tell he’s angry about something and very hurt and, okay, maybe not quite right yet, and she’s suffused with a longing which she tentatively identifies as tenderness. He really needs to see the Blind One tomorrow.

But right now the sleet is hammering against the windows, and she should get him out of the cold.

She says, "When I left Sunnydale, I came here to Deep Ellum. I was planning to do a deal, actually – had an amulet of Kychor to trade for cash for a new start somewhere. I knew D’Hoffryn would come after me; follow-up vengeance, you know–"

"What? Are you all right?"

"Don’t interrupt, even for pleasing questions about my welfare." She smiles at him. He doesn’t smile back. Anyway, moving forward: "So I came to Dallas – have you ever seen the television programme of that name? It’s very enjoyable – and found my way to the Blind One. Once we met, he helped me. He showed me what I could do, gave me my job. It’s lonely sometimes, but it’s good." It only takes two steps to be there, her hands working his tense shoulders. He shivers under her touch but doesn’t move. "I’m as safe as I can be here. And Giles, you are too."

"Ah God, Anya," he says in a voice that sounds like the blues Shanice plays in Blind Willie’s after hours sometimes, and then his mouth is on hers.

They don’t quite get it right on the first try, there’s some awkward bumping of noses and adjustment to their height difference and he has to step back to discard his glasses somewhere, but the second kiss is perfect. He is angry, she can taste it, but it’s not directed at her – what she gets is heat and smoothness with an edge, lips and tongue concentrated on her, his thigh coming between her legs to flex, to press in and, oh. Oh. "Please, please, Giles," she manages through lack of breath. "Take me to bed."

Stumbling, not disengaging, they make it over to what serves as her bedroom. He pushes her down first, yes, smoothness with an edge, and then covers her. He’s heavy, and solid under her hands when she strips off his sweatshirt, yet more solid when she gets his jeans unbuttoned and sends her hand down around him. Big but not too big, yes he fills her hand and he’s so hot that she almost forgets about the ice outside.

But she doesn’t have time to think anyway, because he’s still moving, stripping off her trousers and panties and then two long fingers opening her from top to bottom and tracing back up to strike gold. He circles the pads of his fingertips there like he’s cleaning his glasses except without anything between him and her, firm and practised and so damn good, and then...

Then his mouth slides from throat to breast and finds the gap in her top, and her scar starts to throb. She’s vaguely embarrassed, she doesn’t want him to see or touch it, but before she can wriggle away, his tongue dips down and circles the marred skin just like his fingertips. "What’s this?" he says huskily. "Does it hurt?"

"It’s where Buffy stabbed me. Vengeance-me, I mean," she says. He lifts his head to stare at her. She tries to smile, even though her own ghosts are howling in the icy winds. She can hear the windows rattling. "It’s okay. She was just doing her job."

She doesn’t know why he looks so sad, but then he smiles back. "A badge of honour. It marks the better choice you’ve made," he says, and then so sweetly, anger gone, he puts his mouth to her scar again. The pressure of his mouth is like he’s drawing all the pain into himself, and his hand starts moving again, thumb circling and three fingers rotating, sliding in and out of her, and it’s almost disturbing how fast and hard she comes.

As she eases back down, though, she pulses her hand around his cock, outside and inside in rhythm, while her own thumb circles its honeyed tip. "Christ, love," he moans, and then he slips away from her. She wants to cry out in protest, but he’s just kicking off his jeans and boxers, getting himself gorgeously ready for her. Before he tosses his jeans aside, though, he says, "Do we need protection?"

"Yes," she says, and he fumbles for his wallet. Although money spills out everywhere, he doesn’t seem to mind. She slides down in the bed so she can wrap her legs around his waist, open for him, and his hands shake more but he manages to get the condom out of his wallet and rip open its package with his teeth. She helps him roll it over his length, keep them safe.

Then, Powers be praised, he practically shoves her back against the pillows with his body weight, and he finds her with one hand and then slides inside all the way. _With-me-now with-me-now_ , every part of her sings, the current on overload. "Ah, love, hold on," he says even as he moves her arms over her head and locks her hands on the iron railings, locks his hands over hers. It’s a blur after that, good hard strokes and twists and solid, solid Giles who’s capable of so much more than she knew. It goes on for a good long time, and her heels dig into his back when she comes again, and then he follows with shudders and her name breathed into her damp hair.

The current doesn’t shut off even after the last waves are finished. They take off his condom and her top and their socks which somehow were still on, throw everything off the bed, and help each other under the covers – "boy, whoever gets this next is in for a surprise," she says, holding up a sex-dampened twenty-dollar-bill, at which he bursts into laughter – before she snuggles into his arms. Unfortunately that closeness also means she can feel him tensing up, feel his walls rebuilding. "What’s wrong?" she says, after a kiss.

He smooths her hair back from her face. "Beautiful vengeance," he says, and his voice sounds like the blues again, raw and broken.

"Giles, honey, pay attention. I’m not vengeance any more."

"Oh yes you are. You have no bloody idea." Then he kisses her back, sweet and angry and exhausted, before he whispers, "Go to sleep."

So they fall asleep together, entwined for most of the rest of the night. She does have to get up to go pee at one point, however. On her way back from the bathroom she turns off the TV, which is still flickering soundlessly, and then pads over to the window with its drapes still open. It’s too cold to leave windows bare.

Outside the world is night-grey. The empty streets glisten with ice, the buildings drip with it. It’s silent outside, too: almost no traffic now, not even a normal buzz from the nearby interstate or the clatter of sand trucks coming to make the roads safe. But she can see a light yet burning over at the Blind One’s. He’s up late.

Behind her, Giles moves in his sleep. It sounds like he says her name, or maybe moans it, and then he rolls over to steal her pillow. Although obviously she’ll need to retrieve it, for a moment she watches him, long and solid and with her now. She smiles, lost in tenderness and thought.

Then, decision made, she snaps the curtains closed. One night with him – hell, even one night and one day – won’t be anything near enough for her.

Tomorrow, she thinks, they’ll have to strike a new deal.  
........................................................

_"...can’t do it without you. Pledge! Pledge now! Keep all this goodness coming your way, even on days you’re trapped inside by the ice...."_

At the sound of the appallingly cheerful American presenter-voice, Giles struggles awake. The weeks of travel have confused his sense of place, and he’s not quite sure where he is. He identifies heat, silky skin, familiar if fading perfume and the lingering traces of sex –

His eyes snap open. After another few seconds, he realizes he’s in Dallas and in Anya’s bed, and naked Anya covers him. No, actually she’s on the move, her breasts shifting into him as she slides over in order to smack the clock-radio silent. "Stupid pledge-drive _again_! Why can’t those people just accept they live in a capitalist society and support themselves through advertising?" she says crossly. Then she comes back to him, rests her arms on his chest, and props her chin on her arms, the better to look at him and smile. "Good morning! Sorry about the alarm. I forgot to turn it off last night – I was distracted by you and by multiple pleasure-moments."

"Good morning, Anya," he says. He is wide awake now – all of him, including his morning erection now trapped in the crease of her thigh – and he is correspondingly lost.

Not because being here doesn’t feel right. Having her on top of him – all of her, smile weight softness perfume, dear God, even those bits of sleep-debris in the corners of her eyes – strikes him now as the only way a sane man would ever choose to wake up. Last night he succumbed to weakness, which should bring punishment, yet instead, she’s brought him joy, if only for a few moments in the dark..

It’s ice-grey daylight now, however, and although she’s still with him, his sense of time passing is sharp as vengeance. Punishment indeed – "What time is it?"

"Seven-thirty. You’ve got thirteen and a half hours until your appointment with the Blind One." When she wriggles a little more, his cock swells, pleasure rushing through him from their points of contact. She beams. "This is a holiday equivalent for you, Giles! What would you like to do today?"

Spend it loving you, he thinks but does not say. First, because it’s horribly sentimental, but more important, he isn’t permitted that much happiness even on a stolen holiday. However, he does allow himself the small delight of cradling her face, tickling along her sharp edges before he says, "Would you care for a temporary shop assistant? I promise not to question your methods of inventory." When she raises her eyebrows, he adds, "Well. Not much, anyway."

Her smile is answer enough. Then she pushes her upper body away from him – God, the friction on his cock, and then her delicious breasts are right there; he can’t help cupping them, sending his thumbs over hardened nipples. She gasps, "Oh, honey. But, yes yes, that’s good... I require all my shop assistants to first bathe with me. Ensuring cleanliness is important."

"Is that right?" he says. He changes position, banding his arms around her waist and forcing her up so that he can take one breast in his mouth, lavish attention on the sweet dark crown. She shudder-sighs as he feasts, gently alternating tongue and teeth. When he feels her heart tripping faster and faster, however, he lets go. "Interesting idea. Perhaps I should have tried that method of personnel supervision years ago."

"Yes, you should have." Her voice is more serious than his teasing warrants, and she smooths back his hair. Her eyes intent on his, she says again, "You really, really should have."

The words hang in the air, mean more than he can quite believe. But he holds her gaze until she breaks first, dipping her head down so she can kiss his neck. "Go on, run our bath," she says. "I’ll be there as soon as I find more protection, and possibly some waterproof lube."

"Ah. Fine. However, love–" He slides one hand down and lightly spanks her bottom. Over her delighted gurgle – "I might be a rather demanding bath-partner."

"Oh, honey, I can’t wait!" she says, before rolling off him and then kicking him out of bed. Her laughter follows him.

But as he stumbles, hard and half-blind, through the shadowed debris of last night’s breakage – his clothes, her clothes, his money scattered everywhere – he makes himself start counting the hours. Only so much time left with her, only so much time.

And as they kiss and wrestle in the too-hot soapy water, as they spill naked and dripping onto the bath rug in her tiny white bathroom, as he ties her wrists together with the belt of her robe and then lifts her over him so she can take him in all the way, surround him with wetness and warmth, he is thinking of time and loss and a kind of life he’d given up dreaming about years ago.

Afterward, it’s easy and aching in equal measure. They get dressed, pick up their strewn belongings. While she dries her hair and "puts on my face" – what an odd, resonant phrase, he thinks – he finds his glasses and puts the kettle on. She fixes eggs, and he brews good strong tea and manages to make toast in her insanely complicated machine. They eat at her tiny table, their knees touching under the surface, while cloudy daylight comes through the windows, caught in spinning glass, and the radio plays snippets of news between pathetic appeals for money. _"Pledge! Pledge now! Keep all this goodness coming your way!"_

He could smash the bloody clock on her wall, a stupid cartoon cat with a waving tail that marks time and loss and a kind of life he’d given up dreaming about years ago.

When she catches him glaring at the thing, she pats his hand and then silently pours him more tea. "Thank you, love," he says absently before he hears what he’s named her, how his weakness has betrayed him. She sets down the teapot and then interlocks her fingers with his.

They finish the meal hands-locked, despite the awkward adjustments they have to make.

After breakfast, they go downstairs to Magic Places. The glass of the shop windows and doors frames the already melting ice on the streets and the occasional slips and slides of pedestrians; the latter of course amuse Anya, which in turn pleases him. He is unsurprised that she does find tasks for him: a shipment of ritual bowls to unload and arrange on an upper shelf, two piles of to-be-discounted merchandise in the stockroom to re-price and shift. She puts on some vile instrumental music she always played in the Magic Box – ‘New Age,’ he believes it’s called – and then does computer work behind the counter while he moves from stockroom to shop and back. She hums as she works, just as she always did.

When she unlocks the front doors promptly at ten, the sound echoes through the shop, and he feels strangely bereft. When she whirls around and beams at him, however, he makes himself smile back. It cuts him deep, make him realize afresh how much he can’t have.

He must not have hidden his feelings well enough. She frowns and says "Giles honey"–

But then the bell over the door rings, a customer comes in for a packet of Anya’s sage mixture and a box of her specially dipped candles, and the moment is lost in the currents of commerce and time.

Their morning is busy despite the weather, and they don’t have much opportunity to talk. During a lull she catches him in the stockroom and flattens him against the door, reaches up for a long slow deep kiss that makes him ache in a better way, but then they’re interrupted by a Sykos demon requesting one of her special worry-totems. As she slides the merchandise across the counter, she gives Giles a sidelong smile, and once the door shuts behind the demon, she says, "Here, close your eyes and put out your hand."

He obeys. In a few moments, after rustling and released perfume, he feels a warm, round stone placed in the centre of his palm; Anya’s fingernails tickle as they lift away. When he opens his eyes, he sees the finest of the worry-totems she has in stock, this one inscribed with an eternity-symbol. "You worry too much," she says. "Use this talisman to send all that crap away."

"Anya, but..."

"I give it to you. Which means free of charge!" Then she smiles. "Just take it before I change my mind."

"You’ve given me too much. I won’t be able to repay you," he says, his throat closing on hurt even as his hand closes on the stone. It just fits.

"Oh, we’re going to talk about that issue." Her smile dims. "We’ll discuss it before you leave. We need to make another deal."

He brushes her hair back from that sharp, perfect face, and says helplessly, "Anya, love–"

But there are shadows on the pavement outside, still more customers waiting to get in, and she all but shrieks, "Oh my God, I just remembered! You need to go move your car!"

"What?"

She’s already pushing at him. "Parking demons, wads of cash extorted from innocent visitors – you need to move your car off the street before the meter maids come by!" The bell jangles imperatively, but not as commanding as her shove. "You can park behind the store, honey. Just find the alley and follow it around til you see my car, it’s the same one I had in Sunnydale...." As he stumbles forward, two well-dressed matrons enter the shop, and Anya says brightly, "Good morning! Welcome to Magic Places."

He finds himself outside on the pavement without any real understanding of how he got there. She hasn’t even given him a chance to collect his overcoat.

He stands there in the slush – the ice is melting fast, even without sun – and stares at the passing traffic, people, time. A look back over his shoulder, and she’s visible through the tinted glass. She smiles so sweetly as she steers the customers toward something expensive, and then she sees him. There’s a moment where through the glass he sees _her_ , the essence of Anya, a smile and a frown at the same time, as she stabs a finger in the general direction of his car.

She is both reprieve and punishment, gift and vengeance, and he closes his eyes and wishes hopelessly to hold on to what he can’t have.

Then, arms wrapped around himself, he starts off to collect his car. He still has the worry-totem in his hand, and as he walks, he slips it into his jeans pocket. The action brings his light jacket against his body, and he feels the weight of the mobile in its interior compartment, the weight of responsibility he can’t afford to abandon this time –

"Look out!" a male voice says, and Giles rights himself just before slamming into the rather familiar-looking man, a shadowy reflection.... It’s that git who was staring at Anya last night, who now says, "Hey, aren’t you Anya’s friend?"

"Yes. Yes, I am." Giles nods, even as he tries to skirt around the obstacle.

The man puts out his hand. "Hi, we weren’t introduced last night. I’m Michael Torres, I own this gallery." When Giles reluctantly exchanges a handshake and his name, Torres says, "Anya’s a good woman and a good neighbour. We trade off days, bringing each other drinks before lunch – less business is lost that way, she says."

"That does sound like her."

"Yeah. It’s double espresso for her today, according to the schedule." Torres inspects him. "You leaving, or would you like me to get you something too?"

"I’m coming back, but –" The doubleness of the words strikes him painfully. "No, nothing for me, thank you."

Giles feels the man watching him, judging him, as he moves down the street toward his car.

Busy streets, music, chatter and laughs and footsteps of pedestrians, freezing puddles splashing against the kerb whenever a car goes by: Giles remembers all of this from the previous night. What he notices for the first time, however, is how close the downtown area is. Texas-sized skyscrapers would throw shadows across the neighbourhood if there were any sunshine; it’s unclear whether this is protection or threat. He thinks about the Blind One and the appointment tonight. He thinks about the ghosts raised by the First, about dead dreams raised by Anya.

His car is still there on the street, so far unmolested by parking demons. Before he gets in, however, he pulls his mobile out of his pocket. Leaning against the side of the car, a little out of the wind but still in the cold, he calls his usual airline. No flights out tonight, especially as he doesn’t know when his business will be concluded, but there’s an eight-thirty am flight tomorrow. He makes the reservation and then clicks off.

He stands there for a minute or two, shivering and staring at nothing, before he makes his second call. Willow answers the Summers phone with what is almost her old cheer, and bursts at once into report – Buffy and Spike are running a training session for the Potentials but they need more weapons, Xander and Dawn and Andrew went to the store, a Bringer was spotted downtown outside the Espresso Pump and weird portents are swirling but no harm no foul, she herself is experimenting with a new spell, but he shouldn’t freak out because it’s all under control, really it is. He lets her wind down before he says, "Er, good. I’m sorry, however, my business will take longer than I expected. I should be back in Sunnydale tomorrow afternoon."

She says something affirmatively Willow-like, tells him again that everything’s as fine as apocalypse preparation can be, and then hangs up. As he puts away his phone, he realizes that she hasn’t asked what he’s doing. No one ever asks about his life outside Sunnydale, as if he disappears once out of their sight.

It’s because he no longer lives there, he thinks, and where he does live is as much a mystery to him as it would be to them.

He glances at his watch and the speeding movements of the hands. He’s had an extension – one more night with Anya, one more chance to savour what’s already gone, time and loss and a kind of life he suddenly, desperately longs for. He wishes he could give her even half as much as she’s given him.

The worry-totem is heavy in his pocket, and warm.

When he gets into his car and starts the engine, the radio blares into the city-silence: _"...Can’t do it without you. Pledge! Pledge now!"_


	3. Chapter 3

The CD player in the shop clicks once, twice, and then the music fades away. Magic Places is quiet, dim, and for the moment free of customers, and Anya wonders why the emptiness seems so much worse than any other afternoon. It’s merely regular business operations, she tells herself, and returns to her work.

Only a pen-stroke or two, and she finishes the lettering on the sign she’ll be hanging on the door that evening. **Magic Places is closed early, just this once. Please check our new website, deepellummagic.com, for sales and information!** That seems clear enough, bold enough. The shop should be safe for her temporary absence that evening, and later if necessary.

She reaches for the drink Michael’s just dropped off. Her coffee is hot and sharp on the tongue, and the taste makes her think about Giles’ kisses and the extraordinarily good sex they’ve had, about how wonderful and right she finds his presence and how accommodations will have to be made and how much bargaining it’s likely going to take to make him see sense....

When the bell on the door rings, she looks up expectantly – and then sighs. "Hello, Lindsey."

"Darlin’, what kind of greeting is that?" Dressed for business and the weather, he walks in like he owns the place, which he does _not_ , and then looks around at her merchandise. This is pleasant, however, as he occasionally walks in and then looks at her breasts as if they are merchandise. Which, again, they are _not_.

Even juggling the coffee cup, she manages to cross her arms. "It’s a polite but neutral one. What do you want?"

"Do I have to want something, Anya darlin’?" He grins, which is attractive but also suspect.

"Well, you usually do. Should I wrap up more candles for you, to assist your deployment of wine and serenades?" Lindsey is notorious in Deep Ellum and beyond for his focussed and often successful seductions and their equally specific targets – petite blonde women or bulky, dark-haired men, or sometimes both at the same time. When Anya had coloured her hair blonde last month, he’d even tried his hand at seducing her, but she knew better than to invite trouble into her bed, even for the strong possibility of pleasure-moments and maybe a lovely ballad dedicated to her.

She knows now what she wants. She takes another sip of her coffee and lets it linger on the tongue, just like Giles’ kisses.

"Not right now, thanks." Lindsey walks over and puts his elbows on the counter, leans in close. The grin is gone, and he’s back to business. "I’ve just been over at the Blind One’s –"

"Oh? How’s the latest lawsuit going?"

"A little ice doesn’t stop the wheels of justice – we got the judgement this morning. We won big." Another flash of teeth, which makes her shiver for some reason. "But anyway, I hear the guy you were with last night has an appointment with the big guy? And your guy’s from Sunnydale?"

"Yes, and sort of. Since it’s not a legal question, though, I don’t see why it matters to you."

He hesitates -- which could be real or for effect, because only the Blind One knows this one’s depths – before he leans in even closer. That’s nice cologne, she thinks, even as she edges further back. "Anya, I’ve got connections with... well, connections of their own in California. And there are rumours about bad shit coming from Below. If there’s anything the Blind One should know in advance –"

"Lindsey, don’t even try. He wouldn’t send you on a fact-finding errand when he’ll learn what he needs soon enough. So go away and practice law or play guitar or seduce people or whatever, somewhere that’s not here." She puts down her coffee so that she can glare at him properly.

His smile gets a little lopsided, and his hand covers hers before she can get away. He says, "Now, darlin,’ don’t be mad...." But even as she jerks her hand away–

"I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?" Giles says.

One glance reveals him standing in the doorway between shop and stockroom. He looks familiarly tall and ice-cold, like he’s about to say "I’d like to test that theory" although no actual theories have been mentioned, and then blast magic all over everywhere, starting with a singing lawyer. She doesn’t think he _will_ , but as he’s said, he’s not quite right at the moment – "Of course not, honey! I didn’t hear you come in. Did you get your car moved?"

"Yes. Thank you for unlocking the back door for me, Anya." He says this quietly, his gaze fixed on Lindsey. She can see violence building, and she wonders where the swords are. Too close to Giles’ hand, probably.

Heedless of possible shish-ka-bob, the idiot cowboy starts laughing. "I guess I read this situation all wrong. Let’s set this straight –" He stands up and moves toward Giles, extending his hand. "Hello, I’m Lindsey McDonald. I’m the Blind One’s legal representative, and I sometimes sing at the Arcadia, as you saw last night."

"Lindsey McDonald," Giles says, and he considers for a long moment, as if flipping through a mental file cabinet, before taking Lindsey’s hand. He’s looming now, Anya thinks. "You’re formerly of Wolfram and Hart, Los Angeles?"

And that’s a sword-thrust through the gut. Lindsey, absorbing it, loses his smile. "Long past history," he manages. She gets the pain, she really does; it’s hard to be constantly reminded of what’s been left behind by choice, even if it’s deserved. He does the handshake thing and then considers Giles just as carefully. "Sunnydale, California. English....So you’d be Rupert Giles? Council of Watchers?"

"Past history," Giles says with an odd emphasis, at which Lindsey nods and backs off.

She takes this opportunity to slide around the counter and move to Giles’ side, to calm and to claim him. When she puts her arms around his waist, though – "Good grief, honey, you’re freezing! Why on earth did you go outside without a coat?"

"Because you pushed me out without giving me a chance to fetch one." He almost smiles, one corner of his mouth twitching up, and he slides his own arm around her shoulders. The tension eases when they touch, just a bit, and he nods back at Lindsey. "Blind Willie Johnson last night, wasn’t it? ‘Dark Was The Night’?"

"Yeah, it sure was. So you’re a blues-lover, huh. Good to have another one in town; we’re being overrun here by sad little emo boy-bands, wailin’ about how hard their pampered lives are." Lindsey turns and starts to walk away, only to throw over his shoulder, "You sing at all, Giles?"

"He sings very well, as well as you," she says. "With or without the aid of magic."

She can feel Giles chuckle, even if she can’t hear it – but before he can speak, that idiot McDonald blurts out, "Well, good. The Blind One always prefers it when you can sing, though he’ll do without musicality if need be."

"I beg your pardon?" Giles says.

Thinking longingly of several curses she could once have cast on Lindsey, starting with pustules on his playing fingers and working down, she says, "Nothing, honey, I’ll tell you later." Then, with a killing stare she practised for a thousand years: "Bye, Lindsey! Have a good afternoon, far, far from here–"

But Lindsey says, with a strange little smile, "You know the Blind One will make you sing before he does any business with you, right? It’s the usual practice of anagogic demons, even the half-breed ones."

Giles is exceptionally good at hiding his emotions. She’s always known that, but if she couldn’t feel the spear of tension going up his back, she wouldn’t know that he’s furious – and she has a bad, bad feeling the anger is for the first time directed at her. However, his expression doesn’t change, and he says calmly enough, "Ah. Using one’s gifts certainly makes sense."

"Depends on how you use them," Lindsey says. He’s at the double doors now, and when he pushes one open, cold wind comes in, but no light. The afternoon’s darker now, the clouds lower. But he hesitates, not quite in, not quite out. "So, well, I still have... I still know folks in Los Angeles. Mutual acquaintances, I believe. What do you hear from those parts?"

"Apocalypse. Perhaps more of a threat than usual," Giles says.

Lindsey nods. "That’s what I figured. I wonder...." He trails off, his eyes focussed on the ground, and then in a rush says, "Y’all take care. Anya, I’ll talk to you later."

The doors shut on emptiness, cold, and quiet. But she can’t stand any of it, not today, not now. "Giles, I’m sorry, don’t be mad at me."

"I’m not. I’m just...." Silent, he stares at nothing for a long moment, while she buries her head against his chest and listens to his steady heartbeat for comfort. She used to adore this in Sunnydale, she remembers – but of course she only got to hug him when he was leaving, or just returning, or possibly dying, or enspelled and thinking he loved her. She wishes, even without her power, that none of these are true now, although she knows that one of them is.

He’s warming up in her arms, though, and she holds on more tightly.

Finally, she says, "It does seem like you’re mad. Or possibly jealous–" He catches his breath like it hurts – "Not, of course, that you would have reason for jealousy, because it’s just me and why would you care, but you could be annoyed because I haven’t told you unnecessary facts about the Blind One."

A spirit-chuckle, more air than sound, seems to release him. "There are so many things wrong with your statement that I don’t know where to begin."

"Try," she says, with one last squeeze. Then she takes a step away so she can look at him. "Start at the beginning."

He gazes at her, then shoves his hands in his pockets. A frown crosses his forehead before he pulls out the talisman she’s given him. His thumb starts to move across its surface, circling over the mark of eternity, and after a few passes he says, "Perhaps I was jealous – I do care, Anya, very much – but I have no right to be."

"No _reason_ ," she corrects.

"No. No right." He looks at the stone, and his thumb moves more quickly. "While I was out, I booked my flight back to Sunnydale. For tomorrow morning, since I don’t know how long tonight’s meeting will last."

Even though she’s told herself over and over that he’ll be leaving, the words make her sick to her stomach. Nevertheless: "Okay. But I’m still right, Giles. It’s no reason. I’m not interested in Lindsey. I think... I think only the Blind One can trust him."

"Because of the singing?"

"No, because... see, honey, the Blind One has many other gifts beside the talent for seeing your future. I don’t know what he’s done with Lindsey, but I bet he’s done something." When she puts his hand on his arm, he brings his free hand up to cover it. "He might make you sing, okay, he probably will although he usually doesn’t share his visions, but that’s not going to be a problem. He’ll talk to you and then he’ll give you the Prokaryote stone. I’m guessing he won’t charge you either, because you’re one of the good guys." Despite her nausea, she makes herself smile at him, caress his arm before she lets go. "You have nothing to worry about."

"You gave me a worry-totem, Anya. That suggests something to me," he says dryly.

"Giles, I told you, it’s because you worry about everything unnecessarily." Damn it, damn it, she’s crying. She hates it when she cries, it’s unattractive and it’s a loss of control she just doesn’t appreciate. Sniffing furiously and swiping her hand under her eyes, she says, "I trust you. You’ll do great."

He puts the stone back into his pocket, then smiles at her... or tries to, it’s a pathetic effort. "What if I don’t trust myself?"

"You can. You should. And damn it to the five hells of Boazld, where did I put the tissues?"

He laughs, which sounds like glass breaking, and then puts his hands on her shoulders and kisses her forehead. "I’ll get them." Then he slides by her – slipping away again, her stupid mind tells her, presence/absence, absence/presence – and reaches over the counter for the decorator box she stows there. She breathes in hurt, which is her own fault, and waits.

As he puts a fistful of tissues in her hand, the bell on the front door rings. He says to the three customers who’ve entered, "Welcome to Magic Places! How may I help you?" and then whispers to her, "I’ll take them. You, er...." He pats her on the back, pushes her toward the stockroom.

Here in private, surrounded by her boxes and her merchandise and the life she knows is right for her, she weeps until the river is dry. She makes her decision. Then she washes her face in the sink in the tiny downstairs bathroom, repairs damages with the emergency kit she keeps there, and goes back into the shop.

It’s empty of customers now. He’s standing by the window, touching a finger to the sun-catchers she hangs there, watching them spin, but when she comes in, he turns to watch her. "Thank you for taking care of the money," she says as evenly as she can.

He smiles. "Rather a lot of money, actually. I sold those men the entire selection of those revolting Merlin figurines."

"You did not! I’ve been trying to sell those pieces of junk since the day I got here–"

"Whole lot, full price. I told them it was useful to collect the entire set."

She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to love him more, but now....She stops herself too late. She hasn’t let herself think that word, put name to emotion like that. Now it’s real, and she wants to cry again.

But she doesn’t. Instead she smiles, wide and warm as she can. "You’re the best partner I could ever have. If you ever quit the Watcher game, honey, you come see me. There’s a place for you here."

"Ah, love–" His smile goes crooked before it disappears, and then he’s there, long and solid and with his arms around her. They don’t kiss, though. He just holds her very tightly, his face hidden in her hair, and they breathe together. It’s easier somehow, even though it hurts. Then he whispers, "If I could stay, I would. I hope you know that."

"Really?" No tears, no tears, she tells herself.

He says again, slowly, a solemn promise, "If I could stay with you, I would. Christ, Anya, I want to." He laughs, one of those broken-glass ones but this time it’s not as jagged. "It’s insane. I didn’t even know where you were at this time yesterday, and now I can’t imagine not knowing. Can’t imagine not seeing you here in your shop, in this life you’ve made. It’s perfect." And then he does kiss her, and it’s deep and slow and good. It’s a promise in itself, and she’s had enough false kisses and loss to know a true one now. She kisses him back, trying to tell him the same thing without giving anything away.

But they can’t kiss forever. They move apart, and she sets him the task of choosing the replacement items for the shelf now empty of pricey Merlin kitsch, while she attends to website business and e-mails. He tells her that he loathes the CDs she plays, she tells him to get over himself, and they push at each other companionably until she turns on the NPR station. It’s still the stupid pledge-drive. There are a few more customers, enough to keep the wolf of hunger from the door, and a visit or two from her neighbours, bringing coffee or gossip. Later, she sends him up to the apartment to take a nap, and she listens to him moving around upstairs as the lights go on outside, as evening falls on Deep Ellum.

Absence, presence. She is living in the in-between, and so is he.

When he comes down, freshly shaved and washed and maybe a little more rested, he tells her he’s ordered Chinese from Mr Phat’s down the street. He has remembered their shared love of Szechuan chicken, it seems, and when the food arrives, they eat and then have one of their chopstick battles. No one except them knew about that Magic Box tradition on Thursday afternoons – it was always their secret. They’ve kept a lot of secrets from the others, she thinks, and maybe a few from themselves. The little wooden sticks clatter too loudly in the quiet shop, but then he laughs and she laughs, and he gives her a spice-laden kiss, and the emptiness fades for another little while.

After she goes up to change her clothes, they get ready for his appointment: lock the back, set the wards, close out the cash register. It’s been a good day, she thinks as she looks at the tally on the sheet. It’s been a really good day.

When they go out the front door, she attaches her sign to the glass: **Magic Places is closed early, just this once....** Then he takes her hand and they walk across the street to Blind Willie’s together, into illegal smoke and chat and music.

Shanice is playing one of Anya’s favourite songs, a bluesy vocal over a dance beat that predictably makes Giles wince. "Hey girl!" she calls, and Anya waves back. Michael’s sitting with Yuppie Steve in the booth where she and Giles were last night – they exchange waves, too, and Michael raises his beer to them.

Lindsey’s leaning on the bar talking to Esteban, but they turn as she and Giles approach. She says, "McDonald, don’t you have a gig?"

"Later," he says. He smiles, that shiver-inducing expression again. "I think the big guy’s ready for y’all." Then he looks at Giles, who’s gone still and dangerous again. "Don’t you worry, pal. Any friend of Blind Willie Johnson’s a friend of the Blind One."

"Thank you, I’ll remember that." Giles’s hand tightens on hers before he looks at Esteban. "Shall we?"

And he and she go through the hidden door which swings open behind one of the mirrored panels of glass shelves, heading up the two narrow flights of stairs to the Blind One’s home. Their footsteps echo in the silence left after Esteban closes the door behind them.

At one of the turns of the staircase Giles says, as if it hasn’t occurred to him before, "Anya, I didn’t think – why are you coming with me? You certainly don’t have to."

"I have business of my own," she says, and she reaches up to kiss his chin. "Besides, I want to make sure you do this right." His laughter carries them the rest of the way up the steps and into the brightly lit antechamber-office.

Terrence, the Blind One’s right-hand man, gets up from behind his desk. Standing takes him a while – he used to be a professional football player long ago, before his knee went bad and he did some unsuccessful and spectacularly bloody voodoo on his replacement, and he’s still a huge, muscular man. Anya doesn’t believe in that voodoo stuff, it’s bad business, but the Blind One fixed Terrence somehow and thus ensured his loyalty. "Rupert Giles and Anya, right on schedule," he says in a low syrupy growl, before he punches a button on the intercom and repeats their names.

When the large panelled door swings open, Terrence smiles. "Go in. He’s waiting for you."

Anya takes a deep breath and holds Giles’s hand more tightly. Although she’s been thinking about it all day, she suddenly has lost the right words with which to ask the Blind One if she should go back to Sunnydale.

......................................

Although in one way he finds it difficult – Anya is so close, her presence so rich that he aches with anticipatory pain at his loss of her – Giles tries to look inward and focus before they reach the threshold. After their experiences with Glory and his own inability to see the hell-god for who she was, more, after his failure to see Willow’s difficulties, he had practised accessing his insight; members of the coven had worked with him this past summer, helping him with a skill he’d forgot, or never had, in the Council.

Of course his small gift has been missing since the explosion in London buried it in grief and responsibility, but the past twenty-four hours have comforted and eased him enough to try again. It’s one more thing for which he has to thank Anya.

With breath, concentration, and one hand to his new worry-totem, he sinks down past his own powerful resistances, his damage past and present. Inside is a small, still place where he can think. In his slightly altered state every step seems to resonate on his skin, loud, louder, while Anya’s touch is music playing over each sensation.

Yet as they cross the threshold into the Blind One’s room, the alien air strikes like a blow to the face. For a moment Giles can scarcely breathe.

But this eases almost at once into a sense of honest well-being, and they pass into freshness and light. It’s a large room: ascetic, with a well-wrought but plain table and several wooden chairs; a double bed tucked into a corner, low to the ground; two doors; uncarpeted hardwood floors. On one of the panelled walls hang three battered guitars, which seem to be holding lightly yet forever their last notes played.

The door closes behind them.

The enormously tall, enormously round man at the window, who seems to be gazing outside despite the closed blinds, turns to smile. Yet, as Giles realizes almost at once, he is not a man. Not merely half-demon, either. He simply _is_.

The Blind One shines in the light. His skin – or the bit not hidden by a well-cut, iridescent suit– at first appears to be ebony, but scales of deepest greens and blues ripple when he moves or leans more heavily on his cane. One red vestigial horn decorates his wide forehead, and he has claws instead of fingernails. Yet his smile is wide and human, as are his features, except–

Coarse black stitches hold together fast where his eyelids should be.

Anya brushes her hair against Giles’ shoulder so that for a moment he can hear only her, breathe only her, before she lets go and steps forward. "Sir, thank you for meeting with us," she says. Something in the formality of her tone, or in the grace with which she moves to touch her fingertips to a ring on the Blind One’s hand, reminds Giles how long she has lived, how much she really knows, how much she’s done and what she’s chosen to leave behind.. He understands now, and he values her as much as he loves.... Ah.

In passing he acknowledges this other new awareness, but he tucks it away until later when he can examine it more fully. He has to pay attention to the scene in front of him, to a suspicion now taking form.

The guitars on the wall seem to shiver with the unspoken, their strings vibrating with loss and anger, with righteousness and longing.

Careful of his claws, the Blind One takes her hand. He says, voice a slow-winding river of bass, "My dear Anya, it’s good of you to climb the stairs to me."

She says, "No, no. I’ll come whenever you need me, sir – although tonight, um, well, I do have a reading to request." When she throws a quick apologetic smile over her shoulder at him, Giles swallows his protest that she hasn’t bothered to tell _him_.

The guitars on the wall shiver with the unspoken. The form becomes clearer in Giles’ mind.

"I hear you, child, and I shall hear you later. But afterward, please." Although the Blind One still smiles, the very air shifts, thickens, as his attention switches to Giles. "Let me now meet Rupert Giles."

"Blind One." When Giles steps forward, he bows his head in a gesture of respect; he’s sure that somehow the Blind One will know, even without sight.

Then Giles sees Anya beam at him even in his limited peripheral vision, feels her free hand touch his lower back and centre him in the room’s harmony, as she says formally, "This, sir, is Rupert Giles. I worked with him in Sunnydale, and he’s staying..." Her voice falters before she recovers."No, not _staying_ , but he’s stayed with me here. He seeks a Prokaryote stone, and he’s a man of knowledge and good faith."

"Are you so, Rupert Giles?"

"I try to be. I fail all too often. Yet I try." He doesn’t know from where those words have sprung, but he feels their truth batter at him like the sound of guitars played too loud in a small space. He focusses again. "Tonight I request a Prokaryote stone, so that I might release a, er... colleague... from a bond placed on him by evil."

"Not all such bonds can be broken," says the Blind One, as he touches the stitches where one eye should be. Not a man, nor just a demon....

Giles hazards a guess. "Do you speak of yourself, Great One?"

The Blind One’s smile deepens. "Interesting. In all my time here you’re the first human or demon to call me by my proper title."

"The term of respect to a higher dimensional being?" Anya says quietly. "Hey, honey, do you know something I don’t?"

"No. I just wonder," he says, and he takes her hand.

"Of course you do – Watcher." Laughing a little, the Blind One crosses to the table; he uses his cane for balance and orientation, moving swiftly through space. As he finds his chair and sits down: "Even if Anya and Lindsey hadn’t told me, I’d recognize that note in your voice anywhere. Not many of you left now, and not all together any more, but Watchers are unmistakable."

Red-tinged explosion, fire-licked bodies and books, blood-soaked dust – Giles blinks away the images that haunt him in dreams, and he says, "There are no more Watchers. Other than myself, I mean."

"What?" Anya says.

"Anya my dear, your man hasn’t told you? The Council of Watchers’ home and many of its members have been destroyed by evil." The Blind One rests his hands on his cane, then rests his chin on his hands. Despite his weight the pose is oddly light, as if any moment he could spin across emptiness like a dancer in a old musical. "However, Giles, you are _not_ the only one. Some of your friends are in hiding, waiting for you to beat back the latest tide of darkness before they emerge to take up their duties once again." He smiles. "And you, my new friend, are not a simple Watcher any longer."

Giles swallows anger, swallows hope. He fights for concentration and an even tone: "How do you know this, Great One?"

"Oh, I hear things." He says it with a dismissive smile, but the guitars on the wall vibrate for a second, as if their strings are plucked by unseen hands. "Sit, Anya and Rupert Giles. We have business to conduct."

As he and Anya make their way to the chairs on the other side of the table, she squeezes his hand and whispers, "Why didn’t you tell me you had this horrible trauma, with the accompanying survivor’s guilt?"

"It’s not... I thought you knew," he whispers back, although he now realizes she couldn’t have. She had been gone from Sunnydale before the news had got back to the Scoobies. The Scoobies.... "I didn’t think it would matter," he says in her ear as he holds her chair for her.

"Well, you thought wrong. But we can talk about it later." A brush of hair and warmth against him as she sits down, an echo of anger as she folds her arms and glares up at him.

The Blind One reaches forward and presses on the table. From nowhere comes Terrence’s voice: "Blind One?"

"Please come in, Terrence." Then the Blind One resumes his earlier position: hands on cane, chin on hands. "Sit, Rupert Giles. There is a ritual to complete before anything changes hands."

"You’ll ask me to sing, I understand," Giles says as he sits down. "I’m told that you have anagogic gifts."

"Yes, you’ll sing, and yes, I do, although not in the way young Lindsey thinks. He is somewhat... blinded by his own experience. He explains me in terms he can understand, just as our Anya does, trying to place me between demonkind and humanity when she has become oh so human." He smiles at her – Giles can’t describe it in any way other than ‘loving.’ "Our Anya believes in justice, don’t you, my dear? And honest profit."

"Yes, sir, but this is confusing me –" she begins, but she falls quiet when Terrence comes in. His footfall is heavy in the quiet, but Giles seems to hear the guitars’ song strengthen. His fingers begin to itch, and he feels a strange weight in his bones.

"You need me, sir?" Terrence moves to stand behind the Blind One, his huge hand resting for an instant on the other’s shoulder.

"Yes. The guitar, please, Terrence. You know the one."

When the Blind One inclines his head to the furthest of the instruments, Giles feels – terror. Failure. Loss. But he fights it down so that he can say, "I shall sing for you if you wish, Great One. But may I ask what you believe in, if not justice?"

"Such a Watcher," the Blind Ones says, laughing. He shifts his body in the chair, sliding one clawed hand in his pocket, when Terrence lifts the guitar off the wall. "What some call justice too often can be brutal and harsh, as I know to my cost. But –" the Blind One gestures to the hidden windows, then around his room– "Even trapped in a small place, a small world, without the power one once had, reprieve can be sought and found. As I have done, Rupert Giles. As you may too."

_Reprieve reprieve reprieve_... the word echoes for Giles louder than guitar-song or footfall. Anya’s hand comes to his, presses lightly so that he can breathe again, before she centres herself in her own chair.

Then Terrence puts the battered guitar in Giles’ hands, and the room becomes a waterfall of sound and time for him. He’s drowning, sinking down, separating from himself –

"Giles!" Anya’s voice barely reaches him, but over that is the Blind One’s coolness: "Hold hard, Rupert Giles, and sing the song that comes to you."

Obediently he curls one hand around the guitar’s neck, rests his other on its base, and closes his eyes as he always does when he starts to play – and he plunges into the river. Sound and time batter at him like water over rock. He feels swamp-heat and hears locust-buzz and birds he can’t recognize, and then burning liquid hisses into his eyes. It’s pain, so much pain.

But this isn’t happening to him, he realizes dimly; it happened long ago to the man who owned the guitar, whose anguish passes through time and aged wood and new strings.

All but blind now, Giles bends his head over the guitar, his fingers moving into their right places so that he can play the first chords. From his heart comes part of that man’s song, Giles’ own now – _It’s nobody’s fault but mine, Nobody’s fault but mine, If I don’t read my soul be lost, Nobody’s fault but mine...._

"Again," the Blind One says.

He sings again, confessing for the other man’s past as well as for his own present crimes. _Nobody’s fault but mine, Nobody’s fault but mine, If I don’t read my soul be lost, Nobody’s fault but mine...._

The Blind One says, "You cannot loose another’s chains until your own are gone," a burning stone is pressed against his forehead and enters his skin, and Giles passes from one river to the next, still singing.

The memories come like ghosts in a flood – Ethan, still laughing-drunk as the bad magic swirls around them all; Randall, crying out for help that won’t come and for skill that Giles has thrown away; murdered Jenny, rising from his bed in blood and accusing tears; Grandmother Giles in a cold parlour with dead birds behind glass, sharp eyes and teeth and claws, telling him to read his lessons and be a good boy, be a Watcher because it’s his only choice. A new ghost rises, too – a broken man, but not just a man, lying on cold ground, looking up as Giles smothers his last breath with his hand.

Cold streams from the dead into Giles, and his fingers slow on the strings.

Swimming up in his blindness are three loved, blood-stained faces of those who have gone yet returned from the ocean: Buffy and Willow, his sometime charges whom he once abandoned; Anya, his new love whom he must soon lose. Nobody’s fault but mine, nobody’s fault but mine, he sings again.

Claws rake across his forehead, and the burning stone leaves him. Then someone takes the guitar out of his grasp, and Anya’s warm body replaces it, her weight settling into his lap, her arms going around him. "I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it would hurt you like that, but it’s okay, honey. It’s going to be okay," she whispers against his neck.

"Anya," he manages, and then opens unhurt eyes. He has been released.

The Blind One leans on this side of the table, smiling. "Well done to face them. Now let them go, and take the stone you’ve earned. Use it well to release your colleague from his bond," he says, and then he drops the Prokaryote stone in Giles’ hand. It’s still warm, but it no longer burns. "And thank you. You’ve told me what I need to know."

Giles says quietly, "What is that, Great One?"

"I have heard _you_ , Rupert Giles. As Anya says, you’re a man of knowledge and good faith. You’ve made terrible mistakes. You’ve made hard choices. Yet you are still here, fighting as best you know how." The Blind One rolls his cane around in his hand, considering. "For now, your task is where you think it is. But when your current fight is done – and although I can’t fully see that outcome, I believe I know the victors – you have a new place." Laughing, he points his cane to the hidden windows. "Across the street, as it happens, with our dear Anya. There’s a job here for you, too."

"With me at Magic Places?" Anya says, her arms tightening around him. Under her breath, so that only he can hear: "Please please please...."

"He certainly could assist you, my dear, but that is your own refuge. What I need is a Watcher of my own, as I no longer can leave my rooms. I need eyes to help me read the world outside." The Blind One’s cane pokes Giles in the shoulder not currently occupied by Anya’s head. "After you pass your burden on, Rupert Giles, come back here – come back home – to take up a new one."

For some reason he hears a distant echo: _Can’t do it without you. Pledge, pledge now!_ One last attempt to be fair: "But...I don’t know... Anya might not...."

"Don’t be stupid. I’ll start clearing out drawers and making room for your musty old books as soon as you leave tomorrow," she says, before that gloriously expressive face falls. "Unless you don’t want to live with me, of course–"

"Don’t _you_ be stupid, Anya. But we’ll talk about it later," he says, his own arms going around her waist to hold her closer. The Prokaryote stone is warmly heavy in his hand, as heavy as the worry-totem in his pocket. Both are signs of his amnesty – and so is Anya herself, gift and vengeance and a beloved challenge, he thinks to himself.

He looks around at the room, at the ascetic space filled with freshness and light. The guitars have gone silent, and the outside world is beginning to creep in: Giles can see streetlight coming through the blinds now, can hear the faint sounds of music and human enjoyment from Blind Willie’s downstairs. Blind Willie’s... And Terrence is grinning to himself as he hangs Blind Willie Johnson’s instrument back on the wall.

The guitars are silent now, but somehow Giles still thinks he can hear their singing.

"Well, Rupert Giles?" the Blind One says, with another poke of his cane.

Anya has been right all along. The Blind One, whatever his real name and being, is a force for good, and he‘s offering Giles another way to serve. One more distant echo, full of ghostly urging: _Pledge, pledge now._ Giles says, "I’ll be happy to work for you, Great One. If we win the battle against the First, I’ll come back. Gladly."

"You’ll be expected." As Anya buries a happy affirmative noise against Giles’ shoulder, the Blind One struggles to his feet. He’s unsteady now, weary, his scales flashing duller greens and blues as he moves, and Terrence leaps to catch him and hold him up. Breathlessly: "I’ve known of the First Evil for a long time, longer than this world has spun, and the creature’s always been a pathetic little shit. I trust that you and your Slayers and the rest of your force will dispatch it with speed."

"Slayers? Er, we have Potentials, but right now there’s only Buffy, and Faith, I suppose–"

"What with all the various comings and going, Rupert, the Slayer-line has become unstable – which offers a rare chance, not only for evil but for good. However, that’s all I can say. Work the rest out for yourselves." Sinking back into his chair with Terrence’s help, he adds, "And what request did you wish fulfilled, Anya my dear?"

"Oh. Oh." Giles can feel her sigh, the new happiness draining out of her. "If you’re feeling all right and want me to sing too – Giles and the others have a nasty battle on their hands, and, well, I don’t _want_ to exactly, but if you think it’s right, I’ll go back to Sunnydale with him and fight the good fight, blah blah blah."

With a lifted hand the Blind One stills the protest on Giles’s lips. "Be quiet, Rupert. This isn’t your choice to make, and – free word of advice – your woman will kick your ass if you try to tell her what to do." Then he says, with a shadow of laughter, "My dear Anya, you demonstrate again why you have earned your own reprieve. But I believe your powers are best used in their proper sphere." A full laugh this time. " _Now_ you may speak, Rupert."

The moment of caution has been enough to remind Giles of his earlier conversation with Willow. When Anya looks at him, he says, "We’ll need more weapons for whatever final confrontation we have – you know what’s needed, blessed daggers, swords, the usual. If you could find us whatever’s out there and send them to us, love– "

"Oh, hey. Oh hey! I can do that, honey." She kisses him on the cheek, then whispers, "Free of charge, even. But don’t tell the boss."

"I can actually hear you, Anya," the Blind One says. Although he’s smiling, the exhaustion is written across his features, as if his listening and healing efforts have eaten away at him. "But I approve of your decision, even if we do lose some money."

"We’ve already made it up, sir!" Anya says brightly. "Giles sold those hideous, overpriced Merlin figurines this afternoon – I don’t know why your previous shop manager ever ordered them – but the profit should be enough to cover any number of mystical weapons."

Even as the Blind One manages another laugh, Terrence leans forward over the back of his chair and kneads his shoulders. A solicitous rumble: "Sir, you should rest now. Remember you had one of your bad nights last night."

"Yes, Terrence, yes." The Blind One pats his hand – still careful with the claws, Giles notices. "If you two don’t mind–"

Anya scrambles off Giles’ lap, saying, "Thank you, sir. Thanks for everything."

"Yes, Great One. I thank you," Giles echoes. After he slips the Prokaryote stone into his coat pocket and gets to his feet, once more he inclines his head in a gesture of respect.

"Let yourselves out, my friends. Anya, I’ll talk to you soon – and you as well, Rupert." He gives them one last weary smile. "A bargain well struck, to have such a Watcher as my eyes. Come back as quickly as you can."

Anya catches Giles’ hand and all but drags him out the door. Passing the threshold strikes Giles hard again – but this time it’s the outside world which seems alien, just for a moment, before he orients himself and pulls the door shut behind them. As they cross the antechamber, he tells himself: This is Blind Willie’s. This is Dallas. This is Anya’s place.

His place too. Soon, he hopes.

The music from the club – almost pure blues now, with just a hint of that revolting electronic addition – wafts up the staircase. Anya stands on the top step, her hand holding onto his tightly, her smile lighting the dimness outside the Blind One’s room. Even without his insight, she rises rich and heady to his every sense. "Come on, Giles. We’ve got stuff to discuss and things to do," she says, and she interlocks her fingers with his.

A glance at his watch tells him it’s now ten o’clock; he’ll have to leave at five to make his flight, which gives them seven hours.... "Yes, love, we do," he says. "But, er, this first."

He pulls her back into his arms, brings her close to his body and bands her there. She lifts up on her toes and twines her arms around his neck – and then, caught in a small place between worlds, they kiss. It’s deep and sweet and good, and he can’t quite believe it, but here she is. Here she is his.

This is reprieve indeed, he thinks. This is his holiday.


	4. Chapter 4

Anya breaks first. Giles seems willing to stand here in the dimness and kiss her all night, and he is amazingly good at it. Nevertheless, while she feels this talent is something to be practised often when he comes back – _he’s going to come back_ , her mind sings to her – Terrence’s office is not her first choice for celebration.

And this _is_ celebration, despite her sudden terror about impending apocalypse and First Evils and all horrible things she now associates with Sunnydale, including being discarded at the altar. _He’s going to come back, he’s going to come back,_ she sings again inside.

"Anya," he murmurs, as she lifts her head.

She puts her fingers against his mouth. "Come on," she orders. "Or..." She thinks of something that will shock him. "Or I’ll expect sex against the stairway wall."

"We could do that," he says, and there’s something mellifluous and dark in his voice at the same time. Oh, boy. Nevertheless –

"Stop that. Come on," she says again, firmly appropriating him. "We’re going downstairs, and you’re going to meet my friends, and I’m going to purchase a bottle of liquor from behind the bar, and then we’re going home."

"Home," he echoes, and his free hand touches her face, his thumb caressing her cheekbone. He’s smiling. "Yes, home."

Their plunge down the staircase feels almost out of control, but she keeps hold of him and they make it safely. When the glass-and-mirrors door to Blind Willie’s swings open, music cascades over them – it’s one of Shanice’s special mixes, heavy on the passionate voices and hot, slow beat, and Giles spins Anya around in time with the song. She lets herself go just to arms-length, then: "Oh, honey, do you want to dance? Just one, maybe?"

"No. But I’ll wait if you’d like to," he says in that new sweet-dark voice.

"No, no. Tonight it’s both of us," she says, spinning back to him, taking both of his hands. For a moment they stand there, gazing at each other in the midst of swirling smoke and talk and loudness – but where they are, it’s quiet and warm and just them. She once worked a vengeance job in a dimension where the inhabitants could slow time and curl it like ribbon around their bodies, and that’s what it feels like now.

It’s presence.

Then some young human assisting Esteban with the glassware bumps into Giles, and the moment fades. Their hold on each other loosens, the talk and throbbing music comes back, and somehow Lindsey appears in the smoke, with a longneck in his hand and one of his famous smiles. "How’d it go, y’all?" he says.

"It went well, thank you," Giles says. Just like that afternoon, he slides one arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him, and she puts her arm around him.

She thinks it’s a good idea to smile at the annoying lawyer. "Giles is going to work as a Watcher for the Blind One, Lindsey! After the apocalypse is won, anyway." Their arms tighten around each other at the same time, and her smile deepens. "Then he’ll come back–" _come back come back_ – "and we’ll all have our own jobs. Good jobs. Our _right_ jobs."

"Yeah?" Lindsey says, and he takes a drink. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve: "Post-apocalypse plans, huh."

"Yes. But we all must do our parts first," Giles says, like theory-testing’s just a step or two away.

Lindsey nods, then takes another drink of beer before he says, "Well, welcome to the team, Rupert."

"Thank you," Giles says, still cold, and then more pleasantly, "I’d like a chance to, er, jam with you at some point after I return. I play a little myself. Just did so, as a matter of fact."

"Buddy, you played Blind Willie’s guitar?" Lindsey says, his eyes gone wide and reverent in what Anya thinks might be the first honest expression she’s ever seen on his face.

She also thinks that’s exactly where she wants to leave lawyer-guy, so she says briskly, "Yes, he did, and it was great of course, and hence good and right job. But we’ve got to get going, so bye –" She’s dragging Giles further away as she talks, so that Lindsey is left alone in a knot of people on the other side, staring after them. It’s a good look for him.

Giles’s chuckle vibrates through their linked hands. "You didn’t mind, did you?" she says, but there’s no time for reply. They arrive at the heart of the bar, and she shouts over the hubbub, "Hey, Esteban! Giles is going to be living here soon, with me, and working for the Blind One, so could we have a bottle of Booker’s to go? You can put it on my tab."

The bourbon – full, unopened – slides across the wet-slick counter almost before she finishes speaking. " _Chica_ , I already got the call from upstairs. Compliments of the house." Esteban grins at her, then leans over and says just for her ears, "Not your Giles? You want to try that one on me again?"

"Just stop it," she says. Although she’s feeling celebratory and ribbon-tied and everything, there’s no reason to jinx anything with overconfidence. Jinxes are real, she knows.

Giles says something she can’t quite hear, but Esteban acknowledges it with a smile and then: "Go see Shanice, Anya, she’s got something for you."

In fact, Shanice is waving a CD over her head, vaguely in time with the music, which could be a dance move or a signal. After Anya steers Giles around the end of the bar and several drunks, they thread through the four or five couples dancing. "Hey, girl, I had a feeling a good thing was happening for you. Made you something," Shanice calls even before they get to the decks and speakers behind which she hides. She throws the CD – the jewelcase flashes end over end in the lights, blue red gold – and Giles reaches out to snag it.

"Thank you," he says, smiling easily at Shanice.

"Oh, would you look at that," Shanice says in a purr just audible over the bass and blues. "Anya, you best be telling me all about this one tomorrow."

"‘This one’ is Giles, Shanice, and he’ll be around all the time soon. Living with me, working for the Blind One. Living with me, I said that, right?" Anya announces, because it’s true and because there’s a little too much lascivious interest in her friend’s eyes. She understands the lust – he’s tall and distinguished and ruggedly handsome, silver-strong in the light – but nevertheless, he’s not available.

She’s pretty sure he’s not, anyway. No need to jinx it, she thinks again.

He makes all the right introduction-noises, Shanice does too, and then Anya catches his hand again and manoeuvres him through the crowd – a wave at Michael and Yuppie Steve, another at Consuela who runs the vintage-clothes shop two blocks down – and into the cold Dallas night.

Here on the kerb he stops them both, his grasp tightening on her. "Anya, wait," he says, and then he just... looks. Following his gaze, she really sees their neighbourhood: darkened shop windows and brightly lit entrances to clubs; cars passing, people pouring in and out of doors, walking arm-in-arm or head down by themselves, with the occasional peaceful demon slinking by; lit lamps in most of the second- and third-story windows above the shops, movements behind filmy drapes or caught in the chinks of curtains. There’s even a hint of activity in the Blind One’s windows. Above it all shine skyscraper lights, neon greens and blues mixed with the yellow, drifting down like snow over this corner outside Deep Ellum. There’s music from three different clubs jangling against the others, blues and bass and sad-middle-class-boy yelps and a trill of Spanish from down the block.

"It’s noisy here. Bright," he says. Then she’s in his arms, she doesn’t know how she gets there, and he says, "It’s perfect. Much like you."

The traffic and the passers-by melt into the Dallas lights when he kisses her, and time winds around them like a ribbon of water.

It is this inexplicable stoppage of time she’ll think of later, because she’ll never know how they got across the street, into Magic Places, and then upstairs to her apartment. At some point in their passage through the shop he snags a box for the Prokaryote stone, because when she comes back to herself, he’s shrugged out of his coat and putting away carefully the stone for which he’s sung and anguished. "Are you all right?" he says, as he tucks the lid back on the box and sets it on top of his luggage.

"Oh. Um, great! Yes!" Okay. She’s still wearing her own coat, still holding the bourbon – "Drink, honey?"

"Just one, perhaps." She can’t see his face well because of the fall of light – they’ve only left on one lamp by the sofa, and city-night pours through the windows – but she can hear affection and caring and something more. That’s something released by his singing, the warmth she knew he always had. He comes to her, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and says, "Do you have a stereo somewhere? To play the gift your friend gave you?"

"Over there." She gestures in the direction of her one bookcase. Oh. Hmm. "We’re going to need more bookcases."

"We’re going to need a bloody lot more bookcases." He kisses her favourite spot between jaw and neck before he starts trailing down. One hand begins to slide her coat off, lingering on her shoulders as he works. "And perhaps a larger place."

"Oh, honey." She can’t breathe, and time is going funny again. She manages to put the bourbon down somewhere before she can drop it, then she catches his head between her hands and forces him to look at her. He seems hidden behind his glasses, so she takes those off and puts them beside the liquor. Then, looking at his gorgeous eyes uncurtained, she says, "I’m not thinking clearly at this point, so if you have important requests for housing, or specific needs for the weapons I’m supposed to get for the apocalypse, or thoughts about just what kind of relationship we’re going to have, would you put it in writing before you leave?"

"I’ll leave you a list. Er, about housing requests and weapons, that is." He slides his arms around her waist and lifts her to her toes. "I thought –" A small, tasty kiss – "perhaps we could negotiate the other. The relationship."

"Negotiate?" This is something she’s very good at. Ordinarily. When thought is possible.

"Yes." He reaches around to move the bourbon and his glasses somewhere, his body big and hard, yes, against hers, before he bends her back over the table. It’s a small glass-topped circle, what the salesperson called an ‘ice-cream table’ when he sold it to her, and it’s in fact chilly against her back. She’s vulnerable with her hair spilling over the side and her feet off the ground, especially since he’s standing between her legs, gazing down at her. But then he smiles, and she feels warm and safe again. He says, "The basic premise... it’s important that you know I’ll return because I want to be with you. I choose to share your life, if you’ll let me, and your home. Because– " He looks away, thinking– and when he looks back, it’s like he sees her clear, sees her uncurtained. "Anya, I believe I’ve fallen in love with you. Your strength, your caring, your...well, you."

"God, _Rupert_ , and is it okay if I call you that?" Her hands reach up to catch his shirt, to pull him closer. His stirring cock presses against her when he moves, and it’s so good, but – "Also, is it a problem if I fell in love with you first? Because I think I did."

"Oh, Anya," he says in a falling echo of an earlier time when they’d felt themselves connected, and then he leans over her, putting his hands flat on the table, on either side of her head. The table wobbles when his weight is added to hers. "Er, put a sturdier table on the list."

"Honey, honey," she says, but the room’s spinning, literally, as he scoops her off the table and into his arms. Four giant steps, and then he tosses her onto the bed. As she falls, as she lands in comfort: "New, sturdier table, check. But beds are good as well."

He doesn’t join her yet. He stands there, gazing, and she feels again how hurt and lost he was when he showed up at Blind Willie’s last night. Then his hands come to her, open her legs with a gentle touch and then surf up her belly, linger on her breasts, come to rest on her face. He puts one knee on the bed beside her, redistributing weight so that she slides toward him a little. His fingers move on her, chin and jaw, cheekbones, forehead, then down to her mouth, learning her as if he were blind too.

When she wriggles in pleasure and then sends her hands so they can creep under his shirt and find firm stomach muscles with just a little padding, he sucks in his breath. "Love, I need you to stay still."

"But it’s too difficult, Rupert, you’re too nice to touch," she says, teasing at muscles and warm skin covered with a lovely light dusting of hair. Here’s a good trail to follow, and she does, down to the waistband of his jeans–

Then he’s on top of her, and her wrists are pinned to the bed, braceleted by his big hands. "First negotiation point. When we’re together like this, you bloody stay still when I ask you to." He kisses her again, harder and deep and oh yes, this is more than great, he’s hard against her hip and there’s so much good here that she can’t think, and she rubs against him – "Do I need to tie you up again, Anya?"

Oh, _Rupert_. "Yes, please."

He looks around for a minute before he gets off the bed. "Stay there," he says, and he disappears somewhere. It’s cold without him; the last of winter is sneaking through the glass of the windows, caught in the mobiles she’s hung. She feels that old Sunnydale fear creeping in again too, but she tries to push it away. Tries to –

Then he’s back, with a couple of condoms in one hand and the ties to her silk robes in the other. Without speaking he throws the protection on her bedside table, climbs onto the bed, and then straddles her. As he begins to undress her: "The second point, Anya, is that you tell me when anything is too much."

"Are we speaking about sex or in terms of everyday life?" When she lifts up to assist him, she gets a pleasing swat on the leg. But never mind the pleasure, this is contract time. "Obviously, yes to the first. But to the second...you have to promise to do the same. In terms of everyday life, I mean, because I’ll need to know if you’re undergoing trauma or depression, for example caused by – oh your hands, Rupert, God – um, yes, trauma caused by losing the entire Council of Watchers except the ones we now know are hiding."

He stops what he’s doing, his hands full of silk ties and her bra, his eyes full of something she can’t figure out. "Oh, love–"

"I mean it. I’m not a telepath, you know, I have to be told these important things. Otherwise, no deal."

And then he’s covering her, so heavy and delicious and shaking a little, and he’s kissing her like he did last night, like this is his last chance for happiness and he doesn’t quite believe it. When neither of them can actually go without breath any longer, he lifts his head. "I’ll try. But I won’t always know what you would want to hear."

"Boy, you’re going to be tricky," she says, as she starts to work on his shirt. "If it involves you and your well-being or state of mind, Rupert, I want to hear it."

"Agreed, but you must tell me too. I miss the important things sometimes." He lets her pull his shirt and sweater off, takes them from her hands and throws it somewhere, then drops down again. He’s moving against her already, so warm and hard that she forgets the last of winter, and he says, "Now then. We’ll negotiate more later – it’s time for you to be still for me."

"Agreed," she says, and then she lets go. Lets go of the fears and the cold and the hundred questions that are beginning to form. Lets go of everything except the ribbons that link her to him.

And it’s so easy. He kisses her, takes off her clothes with those skilled hands, God, and then pops her under the covers. The sheets are cool and smooth against her body, almost as much as the ties he quickly, firmly knots around her wrists and then fastens to the bedstead, and she slides into mindless yet focussed joy. In a minute he joins her underneath the covers, and he’s so hot and naked and heavy, a little rougher than she imagined, but it’s good, it’s excellent. His mouth courses over her body, lingers like he’s taking inventory, cataloguing her: his tongue tells each nipple, counts her ribs, measures her waist, and then slips below in a swirl of concentration. She lets go, lets go.

And then he spreads her legs wide, her knees up near her shoulders, and he’s in her and over her, and time and breath winds them together. With every stroke they become more tangled, like her fingers curled tight around the silk ties that hold her to him. He’s breathing hard, sweating and hot, or maybe that’s her, she doesn’t know. With every stroke they become more tangled, until she cuts herself on the ties and he moans her name, and she comes and he comes. As he falls to rest on her, she whispers in his ear, "Not going to let go, honey. Not going to let go."

The rest of the night is easy, too. Afterward, he unties her wrists and cleans them both up, and then they lie in bed and share some bourbon while Shanice’s gift plays on the stereo, Anya’s favourite songs but without the electronic addition. Warm voices and bass surround them but don’t drown their own murmurs about what he’ll bring when he returns, what their lives will be like, what the proper procedures for long-distance love in time of apocalypse are. The music doesn’t drown out the lovely shush of Rupert’s bare shoulder brushing against hers as they pass the glass of golden liquid from his hand to hers and back.

At some point after more bourbon and kisses, she falls asleep. She wakes to chill and an empty bed and a flash of almost-gone nerves, but then she looks up. Rumpled and sleepy and glasses-Giles again, he sits at her small table. The paper on which he’s writing is illuminated by one lamp. "Go back to sleep, love," he says without looking up. "I’m just finishing the lists you asked me to make."

"I love your task-oriented nature," she says. She wraps herself up in a nearby throw and then pads over to him, takes her rightful place on his lap. The lists are indeed impressive, line after line of things to think about and things to acquire. Yawning, she leans her head back against his shoulder. "That should keep me busy while I’m missing you."

"And I’ll be missing you at my busiest moments. Know that," he whispers, his arms going around her waist. They sit like that for a while, warm and safe and together while her clock-cat twitches his tail on the wall, until Rupert gives her a whisker-burn kiss and then says, "I have to go, Anya."

"I know you do." When she moves her head, she can see the silk ties to her robes, still hanging from her bedstead like markers of their time. She says staunchly, "But you’ll be back, Rupert, and I’ll be ready for you."

She feels their tie even after he leaves. It keeps her together.

............................................................

Sunnydale is bloody hell on earth, Giles thinks, as he tries to hold onto his temper. It’s fraying, though, and his fingers tighten on the doorjamb of the Summers’ kitchen. He’s not sure if it’s to keep him in control or keep him from catching the next flight back to Anya.

The moment that, sleep-deprived and already missing her, he had stumbled off the plane from Dallas, he had been greeted by Xander, Willow, and the news that the First Evil had called up a particularly virulent sorcerer and assorted Bringer minions. The next five days he spent mostly at the Summers house; he’d snatched time for naps at his flat and a daily call to Anya, but most of the time he was assisting with the Potentials’ training, offering suggestions for battle approaches which Buffy then shot down, and working with Dawn and Willow on one of the only manuscripts he’d smuggled out of the Council Library. It was Dawn who found a clue in the text about the lure of abandoned holy ground for the First; it was he who’d remembered the abandoned Spanish mission nearby; it was Willow who figured out the way to get in, with Xander interpreting various difficult elements of the old blueprints.

Buffy, Spike, that Robin Wood fellow, and a team of Potentials had fought their way in and got a chalice away from the sorcerer – but Buffy had decapitated the mage before he could talk. They had few clues about the object or its purpose in the First’s plan, and Giles didn’t know where to start.

Further, that night Andrew Wells had seen Jonathan – or the First in the guise of Jonathan – in the Summers’ kitchen, which had reminded Giles that Spike still was burdened with a trigger; their safety here was illusory, the walls between them and the First all too permeable. It was his first chance to bring up the stone he’d brought back for Spike. Whether it was because he’d waited to tell her, or because he’d mentioned Anya and her new place (which had caused Xander to leave the room abruptly), or something else he couldn’t fathom, Buffy had told him that they weren’t going to use the Prokaryote stone. They didn’t need it, she said.

And today he has tried to reason with her, with Spike, convince them of the necessity of breaking the trigger. He doesn’t know what else to say –

"No," Buffy says again, and she slams the refrigerator door without getting whatever it is she wants out of there. Empty-handed and cold: "We need him, Giles. He’s fine, okay? He can be trusted."

"It’s not about trust, Buffy," he says for the hundredth time. "This is not a matter Spike can control."

"Well, then, you don’t need to worry, because the First hasn’t triggered him yet, has he? If it hasn’t happened so far, I’m guessing it won’t. Seems to me Spike’s good to go."

"Good to go on a rampage if the First so chooses, and now his first targets are Potential Slayers. A perfect opportunity to attack your troops from within, yet you’re doing nothing."

"If anybody’s doing the attacking, it’s you!" she says. She crosses her arms and stares at him. The kitchen seems too quiet suddenly, even with the sound of Potentials all around them, Willow and Xander and Dawn talking to Robin Wood in the living room, the clink of swords from outside. "What’s wrong with you, Giles? Is this some weird Anya-vengeance-thing, or are you just too old and tired to think?"

Here in this house he does feel old, and exhausted, and there’s a fault-line through his temper. But he manages to say calmly enough, "All I want is to help. I want to do my job."

"Well, maybe you should have thought about that earlier, when it would have done some good. ‘Cause all this feels like is your trying to control what’s not your business."

His temper shatters. "A Slayer who bloody well doesn’t do her job is very much my business."

"You lost that a long time ago," she says, without bothering to explain what the referent of ‘that’ is. She doesn’t need to. "Just give it up, Giles."

With a muttered "fucking hell," he does. For the moment. He brushes past her so he can reach into the refrigerator and pull out one of Xander’s beers, then heads out for cooler, fresher air. As he passes the other Scoobies in the hall, they fall silent. They’ve heard, he assumes, and it makes him hurry his stride.

It’s late afternoon, a pollution-hazed March day despite the light wind. He sits down on the front steps, twists the cap off the beer, and then takes a long, long drink.

Sunnydale is fucking hell on earth, and he’s lost all the ease he’d found in Dallas. God, he wants to go home to her.

_Nobody’s fault but mine_ echoes somewhere in the breeze, in the hush of suburban traffic and sighing Californian leaves. Another drink, and he remembers his worry-talisman, untouched in the madness of the past days but always there in his pocket. He can’t forget it, just as he can’t forget Anya. He gets out the stone, runs his thumb over the mark of eternity. _Nobody’s fault but mine_ , he hears again, and then he imagines a sharp-voiced, affectionate, ‘Honey, you’re screwing it up but good.’

This is absence. This is punishment.

Another drink. Another pass over the worry-stone, and he can hear his song again, but this time it’s release. He confesses his faults silently, with each tell of his finger on stone.

Behind him the door opens, then shuts. "Hey," Robin Wood says. "I heard what was going on in there."

"Yes." Giles takes another drink.

"So, you see there’s a problem with Spike, and –" Wood begins, but then there’s another door-noise, another opening.

"Hi, Principal Wood!" Dawn says, and the door slams behind her. "Hey, Giles. I brought you a sandwich."

He looks up – she’s interposed herself between him and the principal, he’s not sure why. When she catches his glance, she holds out a paper plate, with some ungodly Dawn creation perched on top. "Thank you, Dawn. That’s kind of you."

"I’m incredibly kind, Giles. I’m, like, famous for it," she says, as she sits down next to him. "Here you go."

The food, some sort of odd roast-beef-and-sprouts thing, is actually rather good. He swallows the first bite, then says, "I needed that, thank you." Then he looks up at Wood, still hovering. "I’m sorry – you were saying?"

"Nothing. I’ll talk to you later," the man says, before disappearing into the house.

"He’s a weird guy. Hottie, okay, except for the principal-ish thing, but also weird," Dawn says. Then she and Giles sit there companionably while he eats his sandwich and regains his control. They talk about going to the UC Sunnydale library the next day to do further research on abandoned missions, and he asks her about her studies. She asks him a little about how Anya's doing, smiles when he says she’s doing wonderfully well.

The calm helps him sort out what he should be doing next, and the wind sighs the blues to remind him what’s important.

When he’s finished with beer and sandwich, they stand up. "Thank you, Dawn," he says, and he puts his hand on her shoulder. "You’re going to be a very good Watcher someday. Far better than I ever was."

Her smile reminds him of Anya., and the thought of his Anya and the talisman in his hand are enough to take him back into the house. He walks past the Scoobies, past Buffy still standing alone in the kitchen, and down the stairs into the Summers cellar.

Spike lounges on his cot reading – the manacles overhead are unsnapped, more an empty gesture of control than anything real. " _No_ , Rupes," he says when Giles reaches the bottom of the stairs. "Not going to be a guinea-pig for your bad mojo and your delusions of Watcherdom." The sneer is familiar, aggravating, a reminder of bad times past.

But Giles lets all that go. Pulling a stool close to the cot, he sits down. "I don’t think I’ve given you all the facts, Spike," he says. "You wouldn’t be a ‘guinea-pig.’ The wise creature who gave me the Prokaryote stone administered it to me first."

"You had the treatment? ‘S not a trick or anything, is it?" Spike says. For the first time in all their long dealings, the sneer is gone. For the first time, Spike allows Giles to see the soul he’d won.

And so Giles tells Spike a slightly edited version of what happened in the Blind One’s rooms – the singing and the visions; yes, the pain, but also the ease, the way he found himself. As he talks, Willow and Dawn, and then Buffy and Xander, take their own seats on the stairs, listening to his story. Then he sings the lines that have meant so much to him, _If I don’t read my soul be lost, nobody’s fault but mine_. "That’s my song, Spike. The Prokaryote stone will help you find your own," he finishes.

It’s quiet in the cellar, even with the movements of all of Buffy’s troops above. Spike looks at his hands for a minute – Giles wonders what he sees, whether blood or victory – and then says, "Yeah, all right."

The induction goes well enough. Willow lights candles, Dawn purifies the space, and Buffy watches. Giles takes the Prokaryote stone out of its box, and then brings out his worry-talisman. "This is a precious gift, given to me by Anya," he tells Spike as he puts the talisman in his hand. "I want you to hold it, think about the river of eternity, and then sing whatever comes to mind. When you do, I’ll place the Prokaryote stone on your forehead."

"Sounds like a bloody stone around a vamp’s neck to me. Eternity is damnation for me, old man," Spike says, but his fingers lock around Anya’s stone nevertheless. He cracks his neck in that old nervous habit, then closes his eyes. Wanker chooses the Clash: he begins, _London Calling, To the faraway towns, Now war is declared...._

Giles fixes the Prokaryote stone on Spike’s forehead. It seems to liquify, hissing as it enters the skin. The Clash fades into silence, a moment of absence, and then Spike cries out, a horrified "No, no, I don’t want to," and the fangs come down.

The fangs are in Giles’ neck, and he falls.

But only for a moment, just long enough for the blood to break through, for the pain to start, for him to think about how he’s going to disappoint Anya if he dies in this stupid way. Then Spike’s back against the wall, Willow’s chanting ceases, and Buffy and Dawn are at Giles’ side. "Are you okay?" Dawn says, offering him a clean hand-towel. Buffy just watches.

Spike says in his own voice, "Oh fuck, Rupes. I didn’t... I mean...."

"Do you remember your trigger?" Giles says wearily, his hand to his wound. The blood is still seeping into the cloth, and he presses harder into the ache.

Spike looks away, then back. "Yeah. Maybe."

"We’ll take it from here, Giles," Buffy says. "Willow can get more with the chant-y, Spike will look inside, and I’ll..." She looks at Spike. "I’ll be with you, okay."

It’s deep quiet in the cellar now, quiet enough so that Giles can hear the beat of his own blood. He can feel the broken edges of his wound flare in pain. "You’re not done yet, Spike," he says.

"I got that, old man. Story of my bloody unlife." Then he shrugs. "Got to get it out of me, yeah. Fire before rest."

"Good, then." Giles gets up with Dawn’s help, sways a little until the room stops spinning. "Er, could I have my talisman back? You might want to find another object for Spike’s focus."

"Got it, Giles," Willow says, already at work. Xander has come down to assist, and he’s the one who finds the worry-talisman, who gives it to Buffy.

She examines it for a moment, turns it over until the eternity-sign faces up, and then gives it to Giles. Her fingers close his hand around it, and for a few breaths she stands there, holding on warmly. "You’d better get some sleep, Giles. We’ll need you tomorrow." Her clasp tightens before she lets go.

He doesn’t know if that’s reprieve or punishment, he thinks with a nauseated little chuckle to himself.

Somehow he makes it out of the cellar. Wood passes him on the stairs – there’s something odd there, but he can’t quite make himself focus enough to ask. The torn skin hurts more than he’d have expected, and he might have knocked his head on the floor as well. But he can walk, and he can drive, and his apartment isn’t very far away.

Dusk, and the streets are oddly deserted. He finds himself missing the noise and lights of Deep Ellum – the longing is like a stream, like water lapping around the streetlights. It’s possible that he’s lost some blood, he thinks, but he keeps driving.

There’s a parking spot right in front of the building, like a present from the Powers. Giles shuts off the car, collects what strength he’s got left. He hasn’t let go of the worry-talisman. It helps him get up the stairs and open the door –

And trip over a box left on his threshold. "Fucking hell," he says, and the world swims around him when he bends down to pick it up. Yes, he’s lost some blood.

But he makes it inside. After dropping the box on the coffee table and turning on a lamp, he goes into the bathroom and washes out the wound, applies some healing balm and a bandage. It hurts like sodding fire, even under the cloth and tape. Then, still unsteady, he comes back out.

The box. A Dallas postmark, Anya’s handwriting on the address.

When his mobile rings, he smiles. One click: "Hello, love. I miss you."

"Hi, honey, I miss you too. So, how’s everything in Apocalypse Town?" Her brightness cuts through the fog and dizziness.

"Er. I’m a little... I managed to get Buffy and Spike to agree to the Prokaryote stone magic, but, er..." Taking the box, he stumbles over to the couch. It’s soft, and he sinks down into cushions and ease and her voice–

Which is a masterpiece of clarion resignation. "Okay, so what went wrong now."

"I might have been bitten by Spike, possibly, and how was your day?"

"Oh my God! Honey, are you okay?"

"Yes. Mostly."

"Rupert Giles! You have to understand that this is _absolutely_ unacceptable." As she instructs him via mobile about her expectations of her man, which include avoidance of fangs, proper treatment of vampire bites, and all due self-preservation, he manages to open the box. Right.

"Anya–" he breaks into her tirade, which has now drifted to the difficulty of sourcing apocalypse-worthy weapons-- "Anya, you seem to have bought me a hat."

"Oh, good, it came." He can hear her smile, he truly can. "It’s not just a _hat_ , honey. It’s a fedora. I found it at Consuela’s vintage shop, and I thought of you. Does it fit?"

It does, as it happens. He lies down on the couch, the back of his neck against one armrest, his boots up on the other, and then tips the hat over his eyes. "It’s perfect, love. Just like you." When she catches her breath, he says, "Now tell me about this weapons problem. Tell me about home."

And so she does, wrapping him up in her voice, like a ribbon pulling him to her through time and space.

Night, dark and quiet, and Giles is by himself in a furnished studio flat in Sunnydale. But he is no longer alone.

THE END


End file.
